Customs watching 2 ports for signs of car smuggling

Customs commissioner Ruffy Biazon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) is monitoring two ports south of Metro Manila where cars from the United States are reportedly being technically smuggled into the country, Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said Thursday.

Biazon declined to identify the ports but said the BOC suspected that vehicles from the US were being brought into the country through them and paying only a minimal tax.

“As far as I’m concerned, (this has been going on) for the past couple of months. But it could have been going on even before that,” said Biazon in an interview.

He said one case involved the importation of three cars for which P9 million should have been paid in duties but “only over a million in cash was actually paid.”

Biazon said the BOC was coordinating with the Land Transportation Office and the local government units (LGUs) where the two ports are located to verify the technical smuggling.

“We have to check if these (cars) were registered in these areas. If they were transferred from one jurisdiction to another, did the LGU monitor it?” he said.

Biazon, however, said this did not actually mean that smuggling was occurring in these ports.

“We have to remember that we are operating under the transaction value of our peso. So we have to verify if the values are correct or truthful—is there fraud?—before we can say there is smuggling,” he said.

“We are still doing surveillance on those importations,” he added.

Last year, the BOC had to ask for help from the US Department of Homeland Security due to the “worsening situation” of stolen cars from the United States being smuggled into the country.

The vehicles were allegedly smuggled into the country through ports in northern Mindanao.