6 Mindanao Daily NEWS northmin . westmin . caraga . davao Your Mindanao-wide Community Newspaper
Editor: ALLAN M. MEDIANTE, Email: amediante@yahoo.com
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BOC insiders protecting Mindanao Daily NEWS client-smugglers and racketeers? northmin . westmin . caraga . davao Your Mindanao-wide Community Newspaper
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An immediate congressional investigation into the delay or non-implementation of the GPS-Enable Cargo Monitoring System of the Bureau of Customs to prevent smuggling and hijacking has been urged. The reason? -to verify reports that some corrupt elements in the customs bureau are intentionally delaying the project to protect their clientsmugglers and racketeers. A lawmaker revealed that some news reports indicate that it is the Department of Finance which is causing the delay in the implementation through its directive to the BoC on the bidding process. The directive for the submission of a service level agreement (SLA) allowing several service providers to participate so that firms, such as SGS, would not be able to monopolize or corner
EXPOSE’ the project. It is laudable for congresswoman Lucy Torres of Leyte to call for a probe to ferret out the truth in the said imputations and to streamline the systems and procedures in the BoC, the second largest revenue-generating arm of the government next to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. It can be recalled that in 2011, nearly 2,000 container vans went missing as these were being transported from the Port of Manila and the Manila International Container Port to the Port of Batangas, resulting in an estimated P3billion government losses in terms of duties and taxes. To address the situation, it was proposed that the BoC should implement a GPS tracking system on container vans, espe-
cially those coming from international ports. Torres noted that an “Enhanced Customs Transit System” (ECTS), partly funded from the European Union Trade Related Technical Assistance program, was put in the pipeline in 2012 with the submission of a service level agreement (SLA) to the Department of Finance for approval. Her measure states that the BoC, in line with the ECTS, initially tapped the SGS to provide the GPSequipped seal for a fee ranging from P750P2,000. Despite the laudable objectives of the project to prevent smuggling and hijacking which result to billions of pesos in losses to the government, the ECTS, which was supposed to be rolledout by the end of 2013, has been snagged by bureaucratic or political delays.