One-stop shop licensing center for chemical imports urged
Chemical firms are asking the government to establish a “one-stop shop import permit and licensing processing center” for chemical products to facilitate easier and faster trade with other countries.
Meneleo Carlos III, president of Chemical Industries Association of the
“Ideally, they (exporting countries) give a permit to export and your national authority gives you a permit to import then, you transact. If one side fails, all you get is open-ended transaction, they export to you but the
At present, the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) requires importers and manufacturers to secure pre-manufacture and pre-importation notification (PMPIN) for the agency to be able to have an inventory of all chemical substances that enter the country.
Carlos also expressed concern over the issue of import permitting on a “transaction basis”.
“Those are the kind that I would say are real trade barriers. To me, that is a sign of an irresponsible regulatory agency,” he said. “But if the idea is to keep track of trade to stop illegal (transactions), yes. But you could stop illegal by identifying transactions, and not quantity.
“What we want to make sure of this is, they don’t start putting in things that will affect the sale price or the transaction price of chemicals,” he added.
Carlos said they have been asking the government to include industry players in the formation of regulatory policies and reforms.
“We could recommend systems that will get higher compliance rates faster than anything the government can do,” he noted.
Oscar Barrera, Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc.’s trustee for chemical sector, said only the big domestic users who are chemical importers are affected by government import policy because they run factories that use dual-use chemicals. — Philexport News and Features
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