By Betheena Kae Unite
The Bureau of Customs (BoC) hopes to have its customs processes to become fully automated by this year, Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña said.
“Yung trade facilitation, that will be my emphasis this year. It will be on full automation. We will be working on that,” Lapeña said recently.
“Full automation can help a lot in cutting the process time – make process time faster and help reduce corruption. I hope we can have all these in place within the year,” the commissioner added.
The Customs chief further said that they will change some stages in the process “that will be felt by the people as we go along.” In the meantime, he said, they have to strictly follow the five-day rule in processing documents.
“If the process time is slow, it opens an opportunity for negotiation. That’s why we have to improve our efficiency.
There’s a likelihood that money would do the talking when there is a delay. I would suspect that something is being cooked to speed things up,” Lapeña said in Filipino.
“I am not taking these delaying tactics of some BoC personnel. I already know you by names, wait until I catch up with all of you. I am strict with my one-strike policy,” Lapeña warned.
It can be recalled that Lapeña signed a memorandum setting a five-day mandatory time frame to respond to all clients, which he said has created improvements.
