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STATEMENT BY
THE HONORABLE NEIL J. ABAYON
AANGAT TAYO Party-list
Assistant Minority Leader

A CONTRARY VIEW ON REFORMING THE CUSTOMS BUREAU
Create "purgatory agency" to weed out the bad from the good
 
Though supportive of the recommendation to grant emergency powers to President Duterte to take over the Bureau of Customs, House Assistant Minority Leader Neil Abayon proposes a contrary view to the proposal of the House Committee on Ways and Means to establish two bureaus to replace BOC.
 
“These are the Bureau of Customs Service which would have the primary task of assessing and collecting import duties and taxes and the Bureau of Security Control, which will exercise police authority at all ports, in charge of customs border control, port security and communication and inspection and monitoring of cargoes.”
 
Reference: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/628050/house-panel-recommends-emergency-powers-to-duterte-to-take-over-boc/story/
 
Simply splitting the Bureau of Customs into two new bureaus and absorbing the same personnel, structures, and systems does NOT solve the problem of corruption there. That simplistic solution will just perpetuate the same corruption and give it new life in the two new agencies. In other words, same banana. Actually, two similar bananas.
 
Corruption will stay there at Customs with the simple two-bureau solution because the bad are mixed in with the good.
 
We must pervasively transform the Bureau of Customs by weeding out the bad and solve other related problems along the way.
 
We must separate bad assets and liabilities the same way effective reform measures were done by previous Congresses.
 
When the National Power Corporation was reformed, Congress created the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corporation. https://www.psalm.gov.ph/   
 
When Congress reformed the Central Bank of the Philippines, Congress created a Board of Liquidators to dispose of assets and liabilities that burdened the Central Bank.
 
We need a sort of purgatory agency where we first separate the good from the bad at Customs.
 
We must limit Customs to policy-making in very much the same way that the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) are now regulating their respective jurisdictions in water and energy.
 
We must have world-class customs, tariff, and border control systems.
 
For these, outsourcing from overseas is the solution. What we have here now simply does not work they way we all want it to work. In other words, the Philippines must conduct an international competitive bidding of customs operations, and new agencies to handle tariff and border control. (END)

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