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CO registration and verification to start June 16, 2010 |
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The Bureau of Customs, Port of Cebu, will start implementing CMO 2-2010 which prescribes for the pre-evaluation of Certificates of Origin (CO) before these can be issued to exporters. There has been a spate of requests from customs officials from other countries for retro-verification of COs that lack information or are suspected of circumventing the requisites from the agreements signed by partners within the free trade areas. The Philippines is a signatory to different free trade agreements in the Southeast Asian region.
CMO 2-2010 was issued in January 2010 by BOC Commissioner Napoleon Morales in compliance with WTO rules on Rules of Origin and on the agreement signed by the members of the World Customs Organization (WCO) which includes the Philippines. The WCO applies all regulations prescribed under the Revised Kyoto Convention which covers trade facilitation.
Philexport Cebu immediately issued a position paper dated February 8, 2010 contesting the timing of the implementation of CMO 2-2010 as early as January 2010 as well as the fact that pre-evaluation of COs will be done by the Export Coordination Division of the BOC in Manila. Philexport Cebu maintained that having the COs pre-evaluated in Manila would cost exporters unnecessary delays (between 5 to 22 working days) before their COs can be approved. On February 18, 2010, in response to the Philexport Cebu position paper, Commissioner Morales issued another CMO delegating all the Export Services Divisions (ESD) of BOC’s regional ports to temporarily perform the pre-evaluation of COs. Since the BOC is represented in the One Stop Export Documentation Center which is managed by Philexport Cebu, the BOC and Philexport Cebu conducted awareness seminars on CO registration and verification. Additionally, Philexport Cebu caused the development of a database management software that will be utilized for the registration of all export products that will be covered by a CO. All exporters were enjoined to register their fast-moving products as early as possible to avoid unnecessary delays in processing their export documents, which is a vital step in expediting payments of the exported goods.
Since exporters were caught unprepared for the short notice issued by BOC Manila, the ESD of the Port of Cebu moved the deadline for the implementation of CMO 2-2010 to June 16, 2010. This is the last extension according to BOC Cebu. |
