The Bureau of Customs (BOC) will soon link up systems with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) in a move to automate customs transactions for economic zone shipments.
In a press conference on February 16, Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla said PEZA transactions with the customs agency — currently done manually — are likely to be linked to BOC’s electronic-to-mobile (e2m) system by March or April.
Sevilla said the integration could not immediately be implemented because BOC personnel in PEZA zones have no computers.
He added that for some reason, PEZA—which is one of three areas for tax-free imports besides customs bonded warehouses (CBWs) and freeports—has retained manual transactions. PEZA carries out about 800 transactions daily.
The linkup will happen as soon as computers procured by BOC are deployed to its personnel in major customs ports by end-February and in all other ports by end-March.
Sevilla said BOC will replicate at PEZA transactional procedures it adopts in freeports and CBWs, but with some changes in operational details that are still being ironed out.
An example of such change, the customs chief said, is the proposal of BOC to get rid of underguarding and to allow locators to instead post a bond for transhipments.
Underguarding is the securing of delivery of a PEZA zone-bound shipment by PEZA personnel from any customs port to make sure the cargo gets to the zone safely; otherwise, the cargo will be imposed with duties and taxes.
Sevilla noted that removing underguarding would mean having to set up a system for reporting in real-time whether a shipment has arrived at the designated PEZA zone.
In order to avoid cumbersome payment of bonds especially for locators that have more than one shipment per month, Sevilla suggests that locators keep a month’s worth of bond for their cargo. He added that BOC would just monitor if locators were exceeding their bond.
For its part, PEZA is asking that the system integration roll-out be made voluntary for locators for a month or two before full implementation to give everyone ample time to get familiar with the new scheme.
Integration of PEZA and BOC systems has been underway since 2012 and, once fully implemented, will expedite processing of export shipments, BOC-Port of Manila Export Division chief Atty. Louis Adviento earlier said. – Roumina Pablo
Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
