Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla. RYAN LEAGOGO/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla will put in place far more aggressive reforms between now and the middle of next year to stamp out corruption in the agency and to institute a “far higher degree of transparency than ever possible before.”
Speaking before the Makati Business Club and the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Sevilla said he and his management team have been enforcing policies to improve data collection, further tighten standards, reduce discretion of officials, restore old practices as well as measures that will allow the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to capitalize on information technology to prevent any customs employee from committing corruption.
According to Sevilla, the BOC has “massively” increased the amount of information disclosed to the public, which is updated and made available on its website. The information involves every import transaction from the previous month, the average valuation for every tariff heading and every country of origin for which there was a transaction over the last few months.
“We also started to compile reference values for key commodities, which account for the largest percentage of our collections. We were also approached by well informed industry groups which have given us data,” he added.
This information allowed BOC to tell if the declared value of a shipment is within a reasonable range. If the value is below certain threshold, the BOC would review the importer’s documents to spot any discrepancies.
“Miraculously within a week after [we implemented the reform], the average values for petrochemical resins went up by 25 percent, and steel went up by 5 and 10 percent. It worked and our collections were up. We intend to do a lot more with other commodities,” Sevilla said.
“We’ve tightened accreditation standards. We’ve eliminated key areas of discretion in certain processes which has resulted in high rates of seizures, as opposed to fines,” he added.
Sevilla also disclosed that the BOC has been issuing since October last year an unprecedented number of alert orders.
“We were criticized for that for holding cargo. Guess what, for every 100 alert orders, only 18 shipments post examination were found to be clear while 82 percent of the cargo were either outright misdeclared or undervalued,” he said. “The average amount of additional taxes we collected for every container which was undervalued was P86,000. I don’t think anybody can criticize us anymore for alerting too many containers when 82 percent of the containers we alert turn out to be problematic.”
Over the short term, Sevilla vowed more transparency in the agency.
The BOC will also restore the old practice of pre-shipment inspections for containers in the next couple of months.
By June next year, Sevilla said, they aim to create a single, central valuation reference for all commodities, and make transactions close to being 100 percent paperless.
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