The Bureau of Customs (BOC) wants to link its database with the Bureau of Internal Revenues (BIR) to see whether top importers’ transactions correspond with their tax payments.
“We have to streamline our procedures to plug loopholes where corruption happens,” Customs commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon said.
“What we need right now is to establish a linkage between the database of BOC and the BIR so that we can have a reliable import map. With this, we can easily identify the top importers and compare them with their tax payments made to the BIR.”
Meanwhile, Biazon said that BOC’s direction moving forward will be toward registration, not accreditation. BOC’s Interim Customs Accreditation and Registration (ICARE) unit currently accredits importers, brokers and other entities doing business with the agency.
The BOC will likely reevaluate powers of ICARE, limiting them to those that will not run counter to the agency’s Client Profile Registration System (CPRS). CPRS accreditation is required for importers and exporters to be able to lodge entries electronically.
There are reports though that the CPRS has become a tool for corruption, with agency personnel deliberately delaying processing of accreditation to make money from stakeholders whose shipments are in limbo.
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