BoC orders closure of Southern Cross Cement Corp.’s silo

The Bureau of Customs (BoC) has ordered the closure of the silo of the Southern Cross Cement Corp., (SCCC) at the Harbour Centre Port Terminal, Inc. (HCPTI) following SCCC’s failure to settle its outstanding safeguard duties and value added taxes on it previous importations of cement.

Bureau of Customs (BoC) district collector Atty. Reynaldo S. Nicolas had issued a demand letter dated June 15, 2004 seeking the payment by SCCC of some P43.294 million in definitive duties and VAT on SCCC’s previous importations of cement.

Two days after sending the demand letter, Nicolas issued another memorandum to HCPTI ordering the closure of SCCC’s silo at HCPTI and prohibiting the release of any cement from SCCC’s silo.

SCCC, a 100 percent Japanese-owned corporation, categorically denied that it has not paid the safeguard duties imposed by the BoC on its cement importations.

SCCC claims that recent reports that it owes the BoC P37.8 million in unpaid safeguard duties "are merely issued in pure harassment."

SCCC argued that since Dec. 2001, when then Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel A. Roxas II ordered the imposition of the provisional safeguard, it has already deposited more P64 million in cash with the BoC to pay for the safeguard duties even if it was imposed beyond the 200-day maximum period provided in the Safeguard Measures Law.

Aside from the P64 million, the SCCC also deposited with the BoC irrevocable Letters of Credit amounting to around P35 million to answer for the definitive duties imposed.

The L/Cs, however, are conditioned upon a final decision of the Supreme Court on SCCC’s petitioning questioning the legality of the imposition of the Safeguard Measures Law. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), however, since 2001, has already reduced the safeguard duties on imported cement following an increase in local cement prices produced by local cement manufacturers.

Based on BoC data, the SCCC imported 162,000 metric tons of Japanese cement from December 2001 to July 2003.