Big port stakeholders up in arms vs Lina

Big port stakeholders are protesting the “indecent haste” at which the Bureau of Customs (BOC) sought the approval of the draft implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA).

Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina presided over a public hearing on the IRR last Friday, despite an order from Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima to all outgoing officials under the Department of Finance (DOF) to clear all policy actions with the transition team of incoming Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez.

The hearing was initially scheduled for June 9 and 10, but the Customs bureau decided later to hold one full-day hearing last Friday.

The Asian Terminals Inc. (ATI) and the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), the two international freight handling firms at the Port of Manila, issued separate letters questioning the abbreviated public hearings and the short period allowed for stakeholders to come up with their position papers on the IRR.

ATI Executive Vice President Andrew Hoad said in a letter sent to the BoC that the ATI objected to the conduct of the public hearing for being “premature, irregular, hasty and violative of ATI’s constitutional right.”

He said the promulgation of the IRR and any proceeding leading to it, including the hearing, should only take place after the effectivity of the CMTA, “i.e., not earlier than June 14, 2016.”

Hoad noted that “when the bill was approved in both houses (of Congress), there were two versions, one for each house.

It was only after the CMTA was signed by the President (Aquino) and after its publication in the official gazette (around 6-7 June 2016) when the public had access to the consolidated version that is the CMTA now.”

“At the very least, therefore, ATI and other stakeholders are entitled to that 15-day notice period before the law becomes finally effective, which is its full opportunity to be informed, to review the new law as signed and assess its impact on its business and activities,” he added.

Hoad said the CMTA should take effect only on June 14 and “no earlier than that, assuming it was published upon approval of the President on May 30, 2016.”

“It is only upon the effectivity of a law that legal rights and obligations become available to those entitled by the language of the statute,” he said.

ICTSI also wrote the BoC seeking a series of public hearings on the provisions of the CMTA, which it noted was a law composed of 1,805 sections.

“We strongly recommend that the next public hearing be conducted at least three weeks from today and that the stakeholders, including our company, be granted the same period of time to submit our comments on the draft IRR,” ICTSI Regional Legal Manager for Asia Pacific Lirene Mora-Suarez said in the letter.

“With all due respect to the bureau, should our request be denied, please consider this letter as our formal protest in the haphazard and unreasonable speed by which this present Bureau of Custom’s administration is trying to pass and issue the CMTA’s IRR, notwithstanding the change in administration in 20 days,” she said.

Stakeholders noted that the notice for public hearings on June 9 (Thursday) and 10 (Friday) were sent to the relevant sectors only on June 6 (Monday) after 5 p.m., with an attached copy of the CMTA but without the draft IRR.

The voluminous position papers on the CMTA were required to be submitted on June 8, which meant that the review of the CMTA was limited to less than 48 hours.

The draft IRR was only distributed on Thursday, June 9, and consisted of more than 150 pages, which was the topic of the hearing that started 8 a.m. Stakeholders added that the BoC informed participants of the hearing about the venue and time after the IRR was distributed.

Also since the venue and time of the public hearings were only announced two days prior, stakeholders complained that efforts to encourage other interested parties to attend the hearing were hampered.

Purisima last June 9 said his directive to clear all policy actions of outgoing officials with the incoming government covered the CMTA’s IRR.

“Operationalizing professionalism means that our job until the end of June is to make life as easy as possible for the incoming team to hit the ground running on day one,” Purisima said.

“We hope to give the incoming economic team all the information and resources they need to have an even more successful 6 years than we had. Their success is our success,” Purisima added. LUIS LEONCIO