SMEs may get exemption from ‘red tape’ in Brokers Act

Small and medium-sized exporters may get exempted from the added red tape in the processing of export and import documents embodied in the Customs Brokers Act (RA 9280).

This was the offer dangled by the brokers’ association that lobbied for the passage of the new law and the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) that is drafting the implementing rules and regulation that enforces the new law.

In a dialogue with representatives from Philexport and the Export Development Council last week, the PRC and leaders of the brokers promised to involve the shippers in the finalization of the rules that activates the law.

They also promised to exempt the small exporters from the imposition of brokerage fees implied by the attachment of brokers’ signatures in every shipment.

The law was seen by the export community as another unnecessary expense that will make Philippine-made products less competitive in foreign markets.

Controversy hit the new law when Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) questioned one of its provision which require that import and export entry documents will only be signed by customs brokers under oath based on the covering documents submitted by the traders.

The export leader said that the provision in getting all exports and import documents signed by brokers "will add another layer of red tape and increase the processing fee of small and medium exporters."

He further explained that the initiatives of both the government and the export sector at speeding up the processing time of international trade documents will be negated by the new law.

He mentioned that to be hit will be the successful project of the Bureau of Customs, the Philippine Export Processing Zone Authority (PEZA), the Export Development Council and the Semi-conductor Industry Association of the Philippines of developing paperless processing of export and import documents in selected PEZA firms in Metro Manila and Cebu.

In the pipeline is the expansion of the Automated Export Documentation System (AEDS) in other major exporting regions led by Subic and Clark in Central Luzon.

Ortiz-Luis likewise said Philexport’s one-stop-export-processing centers in Manila, Central Luzon, Cebu, Davao and Gen. Santos City that have cut down the processing of export papers of SMEs in those areas from weeks to a few minutes per document is also at jeopardy.

The new law was reportedly drafted and sold to Congress by the shipping brokerage industry to professionalize its ranks and minimize graft and corruption and technical smuggling involving "fixers" in their midst.

But with the added red tape already made cumbersome by so marry signatures needed for each shipment, parts of that law has been seen as another way of delaying and making more expensive the cost of shipping in and out goods from the country’s major ports.