THE Bureau of Customs (BOC) is reducing the time requirement in the submission of the advance inward foreign manifest (IFM) from 12 hours prior to cargo arrival in any Philippine port to six hours.
The decision addresses the issue of manifest submission from countries belonging to the same time zone, making the 12-hour requirement improbable.
“BOC is making the necessary changes as a win-win solution still geared toward trade facilitation with minimum security implemented to prevent the entry of illegal goods in our ports,” Customs deputy commissioner Atty. Rey Nicolas told PortCalls.
“With the new requirement, carriers will now have no to reason to delay the submission of such requirement to the BOC,” Nicolas added.
The BOC is still fine tuning the Customs Administrative Order (CAO) that will amend CAO 1-2006. The latter requires shippers and other transport service providers such as shipping lines, freight forwarders and cargo consolidators to submit advance information on all inbound cargoes to evaluate the risk of smuggling and the entry of contraband substances.
Smuggling has cost the government at least P50 billion in duties and taxes each year.
The Association of International Shipping Lines is now testing the submission of the advance IFM with two of its preferred value-added service providers — E-Konek Pilipinas and Cargo Data Exchange Center.
