10 Customs flaws: an insider’s view

Career civil executive Atty. Ramon G. Cuyco was properly warned. Joining the Customs Bureau in Jan. 2003 would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He had faced heavy pressure before, at the finance department, in exposing a giant firm’s P1.1-billion and a leading lawyer’s P48-million false tax credits. Yet he was entering the den of iniquity that Customs is. Within two months he drafted reform measures. Predictably the agency crooks isolated him, while circumventing his authority. Still he persisted, and was able to identify “ten failings of the Customs Bureau,” for the P-Noy admin to correct, namely:

(1) Graveyard of professionalism. Postings and promotions are based on kinship, friendship and pecuniary interests. Ad hoc bodies, task forces, and special positions proliferate to accommodate bagmen. Graft busters are put in the freezer till they learn to “cooperate”.

(2) Unfair target setting. Finance bosses set collection quotas without consulting or entertaining questions from field collectors, examiners and appraisers. The law dismisses from the service those who flunk.

(3) Weak yard monitoring, border control and gate keeping. Imports, taxable or duty-free, must land in a port of entry; otherwise, smuggled. But free ports and economic zones have sprouted all over beyond the scope of Customs. Private port operators allow only favored Customs officers entry.

(4) Flawed selling of seized contraband. Forfeited and abandoned goods are deemed government property that may be sold. Customs rules purposely exploit loopholes in the auction law, enabling bribing smugglers to regain contraband. Or, officers filch the goods from the Customs storage.

(5) Anemic prosecution. Customs bosses trumpet accomplishments via televised crushing of contraband, like luxury cars recently, not through jailing of smugglers. The Legal Service that gathers evidence and files cases has been decimated by the reassignment of lawyers to other units.

(6) Defenseless operation areas. Grafters mislabel goods for “transshipment” to skirt inspection and taxation. They also allow over-withdrawal of goods from bonded warehouses.

(7) Regulatory capture. Importers, exporters, traders and brokers hold by the nose the very Customs brass who are supposed to regulate and monitor them.

(8) Useless anti-smuggling units. During his seven years at Customs, Cuyco has witnessed six task forces: ASIIC, NASTF, CASG, ASTF, TFAS and PASG. Except for TFAS that was under the Customs chief, outsiders headed the rest. All failed to dramatically increase collections and ended up as extortion gangs. The only major accomplishment, as a sarcastic joke goes, is the dropping of the letter T from their name to become “Ask Force”.

(9) Flawed concept of trade facilitation. Any attempt to institute better controls, no matter how logical, is condemned outright as violating the GATT and Kyoto Convention. Thus collection gaps and leaks abound in the name of speeding up trade.

(10) Misused automation. No sooner had Customs computerized than crooked officials and smugglers defrauded the system. False entries became bases for succeeding misclassification of goods and misappraisal of duties. Smugglers were able to dictate under what rules their contraband were to be cleared for entry. –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)