Customs to stop transshipment operations this month

The Bureau of Customs on Thursday said it will issue a Customs Administration Order this month to stop transshipment operations in the country, a move that can curb abuse of official procedures. While the bureau recognizes that transshipment is one of the "trade facilitation practices being implemented by the agency," Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez said it has a lot of disadvantages and has been prone to abuse. Transshipment is the process of moving imported cargoes from their original ports of discharge to their final ports of destination, and is covered under the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines. The Customs Bureau said it recently dealt with incidents of missing cargoes, particularly some 2,000 missing containers covered by transshipment permits from the Port of Manila and the Manila International Container Port to the Port of Batangas. The incidents occurred between January and May this year, prompting Congress to investigate the situation. The bureau reportedly lost some P240 million from the missing containers, or roughly P120,000 per container. Alvarez said the agency's Legal Service has ruled that there is legal basis to stop transshipment operations and simply process, assess and pay for cargoes at their ports of discharge. The Customs chief said changes in the rules would prevent such incidents from occurring again. He said he had already tasked the agency's Post-Entry Audit Group to launch a nationwide audit of all transshipments in previous years. "Transshipment transaction has become a marketing tool for customs collection districts which are forced by circumstances to attract the patronage of as many customers," Alvarez said, adding that the high collection targets set by the respective collection districts compounded the trend. — JMT/VS, GMA News