Customs tightens watch on freeports to curb smuggling

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan , Philippines   â€“ Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said yesterday the Bureau of Customs (BOC) has implemented many reforms over the last two years.

Speaking at the 1st North Philippines Economic Summit held at the Sison Auditorium here sponsored by the provincial government of Pangasinan, Biazon said transshipment procedures in the BOC have now been tightened to prevent containers going missing as he cited that among the weak spots in the bureau’s cargo management is the transshipment of goods between ports of discharge and freeport zones that resulted in the loss of over 2,000 containers in 2010.

Biazon said they have tightened their watch on the various freeports and economic zones in the country to avoid their being used for smuggling.

“We are strictly enforcing our customs laws in the freeport zones, even as we try to help make it easier to do business for freeport zone locators,” he added.

The BOC’s reform program would benefit traders at the Port of San Fernando, La Union where port operations were expanded to beef up economic activity in the Ilocos region and the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Records of the National Statistics Office for the past five years showed that the country’s imports posted an average growth of 3.7 percent while the average growth rate of exports reached 2.2 percent, Biazon said.

“On a year-to-year basis, we have sustained a steady growth in our volume of imports and exports,” he said.

He said that while the country enjoys a significant growth in the volume of trade in the global market and even as it remains bullish in its economic outlook, the Philippines still needs to catch up with the rest of the world economies, particularly among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members.

Biazon said the BOC is now on its final stage of computerization as it has put in place the e2m or the electronic-to-mobile system.

The system, designed to facilitate faceless, paperless and cashless transactions at the bureau, has minimized, if not eliminated, human intervention in the processing of entries in the BOC, he said.

“Human intervention and abuse of discretion by some customs misfits in the processing of customs entries have been found among the causes of corruption in the BOC,” Biazon said.

But with the e2m and eventually the completion of the final stage of the bureau’s computerization program through its Integrated Philippine Customs System, this loophole in the BOC’s current system would eventually be corrected and its check and balance measures strengthened, he said.

Coupled with the BOC’s computerization program is its National Single Window (NSW) project, Biazon said the completion of the bureau’s NSW phase 1 project electronically linked the BOC with the 40 government and private agencies that are involved in the processing and issuances of import and export permits and documents.

Through the NSW, the tedious and long process of physical verification of documents has been eliminated, he said.

He added that the NSW also enhanced not only the efficiency of the BOC’s document verification system but also those of the other concerned government agencies as well.

Biazon also said that through the NSW, the old modus operandi of recycling import permits is now a thing of the past.

He said import allocation certificates, for instance, could now be verified in real time with the concerned government agencies.

He is optimistic that with the completion of the NSW project that would electronically link the Philippines with the ASEAN Single Window, the Philippines will be on an even playing field, economically, with our ASEAN counterparts.