NAIA tightens lid on Chinese tour groups

Customs officials ordered examiners at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) yesterday to keep a tight watch on Chinese tour groups that may be used by smugglers to bring in taxable items in commercial quantity.

Airport District Collector Celso Templo said examiners will be opening the luggage of arriving tour groups, which usually number about 10 to 20 persons.

He said groups usually exceed the allowable commercial items, intended to supply buyers in Greenhills, San Juan and at the Tutuban and Divisoria malls.

Templo said smugglers are now using tour groups to bring into the country imported items. The items are supposedly meant for personal use of the travelers, but later on they pool together and dispose them to ready buyers at said malls.

"Try going to the those malls, and you will find all kinds of items from mainland China being sold at very low prices. And you will wonder how these things can be sold very cheap with proper taxes," he said.

Templo has issued a directive requiring all examiners at the airport to open the luggage of arriving passengers in tour groups and to assess the pooled items of the group for purposes of reaching the amount of taxes that can be levied on them.

Reports also revealed that the bulk of the smuggled goods from China comes from the Manila International Container Port at the North Harbor, where taxes to be levied on them are instead haggled between exporters and some unscrupulous Customs officials.

The government is losing millions of pesos daily in terms of revenue which should otherwise been collected if the assessed value of the importation is imposed with the right amount of taxes, local manufacturers said.