Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina once again requested both houses of Congress to approve the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA) by October to address not just concerns over balikbayan (personal effects) shipments, but those of other sectors as well.
Under the CMTA, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) is pushing for a higher de minimis value, the minimum value of goods exempt from Customs duties and taxes.
A few weeks ago at the Senate Committee on Ways and Means hearing on the CMTA, all stakeholders agreed to increase the de minimis to P10,000 from the current value of P10.
But during a September 3 Senate hearing that focused on balikbayan boxes, Atty. Agaton Teodoro Uvero, BOC deputy commissioner for Assessment and Operations, suggested including a special provision in the CMTA just for balikbayan box shipments prescribing a higher value for goods that may be shipped via such boxes without duties and taxes.
Overseas Filipino worker (OFW) groups suggested a ceiling of P150,000 to P200,000, while Senator Edgardo Angara, Jr., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that handles the CMTA bill, said he was looking at around P100,000.
Angara assured the CMTA is a priority bill with the Senate holding two more meetings on the proposed law.
Apology to OFWs
During the Sept 3 Senate hearing, Lina apologized to OFWs for a BOC policy conducting random physical inspection on balikbayan boxes interpreted by OFWs as pointing to them as technical smugglers.
Lina offered apologies to OFW representatives for the BOC policy which triggered a furor among the general public, in particular the OFW community.
The customs chief clarified that BOC’s actions were not mean to single out balikbayan boxes but were against smuggled items that might be hidden among containers carrying consolidated balikbayan boxes. He added that when the issue broke out, BOC had only inspected five containers and opened some boxes from the US where commercial items such as television sets and a refrigerator were discovered.
Lina vowed to implement measures that would facilitate the sending by OFWs of balikbayan boxes to their families in the Philippines.
The BOC had earlier said it was going to implement random physical inspection of balikbayan boxes on suspicion they were being used by unscrupulous individuals to import high-value commercial items. The policy was subsequently revoked by President Benigno Aquino III who ordered an x-ray inspection instead.
READ: Aquino orders BOC to leave balikbayan boxes alone amid public uproar
On September 2, BOC released revised rules on the handling of balikbayan boxes which require mandatory x-ray scanning of these shipments.
READ: BOC affirms xray inspection for balikbayan boxes under revised rules
About P3 billion to P5 billion are lost each year to smuggling via balikbayan boxes, according to Lina in the Sept 3 Senate hearing. The figure is so much higher than the P600 million a year the agency had earlier announced; the agency clarified the earlier number had been a “very rough” estimate.
Moving forward, the customs chief said the agency is teaming up with OFW Family Party List Representative Roy Señeres to put up a 24/7 complaints desk/call center at BOC and create a social media account for balikbayan box concerns.
Lina also asked OFW groups and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration to provide BOC with a list of OFWs, as well as to include the packing list and invoice in the shipping manifest to assure the bureau the incoming box is from an OFW and to have the shipment “pre-cleared.” – Text and photo by Roumina Pablo
