Customs exec urges more container van scanning

MANILA, Philippines - A Bureau of Customs official called yesterday on new Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez to retain the bureau’s container van scanning procedure to boost revenue collection and strengthen national security.

Lawyer Ma.Lourdes Mangaoang, chief of the BOC’s X-ray inspection project unit, said the XIP has contributed much in increasing the revenue collection for the government by assisting the bureau’s assessment division in detecting undervaluation and misdeclaration.

Citing statistics, she disclosed that the XIP requires importers to pay additional taxes for their undervalued/misdeclared importations. From January to December 2008, XIP contributed P21,249,246.31; P11,209,810.12 for 2009; and P4,430,818 for the first quarter of 2010. She emphasized that this additional collection would multiply if the low turnout of container vans to be scanned is increased.

She said that the limited number of container vans subjected for scanning in the Port of Manila (POM) and Manila International Container Port (MICP) is primarily due to the random selectivity system of electronic tagging being implemented by the Risk Management Group (RMG) under the Çustoms Intelligence and Investigation Service (CIIS) of which the XIP is not a part.

To address this problem of electronic tagging resulting in a low turnout of container scanning, the XIP chief has proposed to Alvarez the creation of a collegial risk management committee for X-ray scanning. Under this scheme, a collegial committee will be formed to implement a risk management system for X-ray scanning. This committee shall be separate from the Risk Management Group under the CIIS for the purpose of maximizing X-ray scanning capacity of the containers to be X-ray scanned.

Mangaoang stressed that under her watch, the XIP has seized contraband and other anti-social goods like toluene, xylene and methyl ketone which are regulated chemicals used in the production of shabu.

A number of different brands of expensive luxury cars, blank CDs/DVDs for the production of pirated software, assorted units of cellular phones and 12 container vans of optical media manufacturing materials worth P2,139,816,858.27 has been seized.

In just a few years of operation, the BOC’s X-ray inspection project has breached into the elite exclusive list of nations whose Customs X-ray inspection procedures have passed the rigid evaluation conducted by representatives of the Millenium Challenge Corp. and the European Union.