The Philippine Bureau of Customs’ (BOC) electronic-to-mobile system (e2m) was up and running again late Friday after it shut down on Thursday due to an expired license affecting mainly the automated payment of duties and taxes.
PortCalls sources said they expect everything to return to normal by today.
When the system shut down, the BOC allowed manual release of imports.
Customs deputy commissioner for the Management Information System and Technical Group Ma. Caridad Manarang issued a memo dated August 3, 2012 which enumerated contingency procedures for the processing of entries with payments of duties and taxes and other fees that cannot be transmitted to BOC through the Payment Abstract Secure System v. 5 or PASS 5.
“This is one of the things we failed to monitor,” Manarang admitted in a text message to PortCalls.
A group of brokers and importers expressed dismay over the shutdown, short as it was.
“If the situation is not contained, there is a possibility that group action will be taken by brokers and personeros,” customs broker Jun Javier of Schenker Philippines told PortCalls on Friday morning.
“It is the final assessment and the payment of duties and taxes which are heavily affected. A scheduled skeleton force is placed but the problem is the banks are closed on weekends,” Javier said.
Port congestion was manageable since the glitch happened at a traditionally lean shipping period and was promptly resolved.
Confederation of Truckers Association of the Philippines president Ruperto Bayocot on Friday morning said he did not expect delays in cargo movement.
“Right now, ports have too much capacity to handle the cargoes and the effect of the issue is insignificant,” Bayocot told PortCalls.
E2m is an ambitious BOC project that covers electronic lodgment of import and export entries and clearance of cargoes. Because of its poor reputation, e2m has sometimes been derisively described as “electronic-to-manual” system.
Question PC by Danilo Rizzuti
Image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
