FREIGHT forwarders, be ready for changes at the Philippine Shippers’ Bureau (PSB).
A reliable source from PSB’s mother agency, the Department of Trade and Industry, told PortCalls the bureau will be renamed Supply Chain and Logistics Management Division and will come under DTI’s Competitiveness Bureau, which in turn is under the Trade and Investments Group.
The planned change may come into effect by middle of December.
The source did not give other details so as not to pre-empt any official announcement, but said PSB’s mandate and personnel will be retained.
If that is the case, then the PSB — whose key mandate is to accredit and monitor seafreight forwarders — will for now remain under the DTI. There have been earlier reports that the bureau’s accreditation function will be transferred to the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina), an agency under the Department of Transportation and Communications.
The transfer to DOTC would mean seafreight forwarders and airfreight forwarders would now be regulated by the same department. The latter are regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, a DOTC agency.
Earlier, the same PortCalls source confirmed there was an “ongoing rationalization plan” to change the structure of the PSB.
He said the changes had been mooted about in the DTI since 2005, but it was only now that discussions had taken a more definite tone.
PSB was established as a regular bureau by virtue of Executive Order 514 issued on March 26, 1992 by former President Corazon Aquino, making it a line agency of the DTI. It used to be an attached agency known as the Philippine Shippers’ Council. ––Roumina M. Pablo
