Reinventing the Customs Bureau

While the Bureau of Customs (BOC) is perhaps one of the oldest agencies of government, it has apparently not kept apace with the needs of changing times of the seamless globalized trading in the world market. With free trade areas and zero tariff, the seamless globalized trading has rendered the services of Customs almost irrelevant, if not superfluous.

What is constant though that has kept the Customs Bureau always in the news are the pernicious problems of rampant smuggling and perennial corruption in the agency.

Administration after administration had tried but failed to re-invent the Bureau of Customs by creating special bodies and presidential task forces to help the agency curb smuggling and other violations of the Customs and Tariff Code.

First there was the Economic Intelligence and Investigation Bureau (EIIB) created under the Administrative Code of 1987. It used to be one of the bureaus under the Department of Finance (DOF) along with the BOC and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. At its height of effectiveness, EIIB figured in so many high-profile cases of smuggling the agency foiled.

But when former President Joseph Estrada assumed office at Malacanang, he ordered the abolition of the EIIB in the aftermath of his running feud with then EIIB’s head, then retired General Jose Almonte. Invoking his powers under the 2000 budget law, Mr. Estrada issued Executive Order (EO) 191 that abolished the EIIB.

Estrada then issued EO 45 that created the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Task Force in the Office of the President (OP) to investigate and prosecute crimes involving large scale smuggling and other frauds upon Customs and providing measures to expedite seizure proceedings. A few months later, however, Estrada received complaints and reports of abuses of the Task Force.

Estrada revamped it and created a new body called the Presidential Task Force Aduana. He empowered the Task Force Aduana with elements from the Presidential Security Group (PSG), Intelligence Service Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), and was augmented by other elements of the Philippine Army, Philippine Air Force, Philippine Navy, and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA).

During the period of its existence, Task Force Aduana effectively accomplished its missions that led to the neutralization of smuggling syndicates and apprehension of its key operators at the Customs Bureau.

And again, several months later, Estrada got wind of reports about certain Aduana members were in cahoots and complicit with smuggling syndicates. So, Estrada totally deactivated Task Force Aduana and its functions and missions absorbed by the BOC under EO 282 issued on Sept. 5, 2000.

When former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over, she likewise tried to address the rampant smuggling and corruption at the BOC. Mrs. Arroyo issued EO No. 155 on Dec. 11, 2002 creating the Anti-Smuggling Intelligence and Investigation Center. She empowered the ASIIC to investigate and interdict smuggling and other acts violating the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines “committed on large scale or by criminal syndicates.”

Mrs. Arroyo placed the new anti-smuggling body also under the supervision and control of the OP and designated almost the same law enforcement agencies. But she added new ones to comprise the ASIIC center, namely; the PSG, ISAFP, Customs Bureau, the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Coast Guard, and the Department of Justice and augmented by elements of the Army, Navy, the Air Force and the NICA.

Mrs. Arroyo later improved it with her creation of the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG) under EO 624 issued on May 21, 2007. However, a ruling by a Manila regional trial court in March, 2010, declared PASG under EO 624 lacked legal basis based on the complaint of an accused in a smuggling case filed by PASG.

The creation of such special presidential anti-smuggling task forces ended when the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA) was finally signed into law by former President Benigno Aquino III. The CMTA, or Republic Act 10863 came into effect last year towards the end of the Aquino administration. The CMTA bill was originally authored by former Muntinlupa City Rep. Rozzano Rufino “Ruffy” Biazon who was plucked out by P-Noy to serve as his Customs chief in 2011.

“P-Noy didn’t create any anti-smuggling task force. My opinion is that such a task force is susceptible to becoming ‘ask force.’ It’s best to make only one agency accountable. Under the law, it’s the BOC,” Biazon cited. Ironically, PNoy unceremoniously removed Biazon in 2013 before the CMTA was signed into law.

Now back as Muntinlupa Congressman, Biazon disclosed he filed a further improvement of the CMTA to make the BOC more autonomous and free from political influence. To make BOC truly modernized, he pointed out, his bill seeks to give more financial flexibility to spend for modernization of the agency equipment. In his way, he explained, the BOC won’t have to go to Congress for budget approval for its modernization needs to insulate them from undue political interferences.

All these attempts in the past up to present to put a lid on the proliferation of the smuggling and corruption at the Customs Bureau went to naught, if not total failure.

So the great disappointment of President Rodrigo Duterte was understandable on the P6.4-billion worth of shabu smuggling that allegedly slipped through under the noses of Customs commissioner Nicanor Faeldon and his fellow Magdalo officers appointed at the Bureau. In his exasperation, President Duterte wished for the establishment of a “revolutionary government” in our country to target, among other things, the so many grafters and smugglers at the Bureau of Customs.

In his usual extemporaneous speech at Malacanang Palace yesterday, President Duterte echoed anew his wish to rule under a “revolutionary government,” if only to stamp out the twin evils of graft and corruption in the Philippine bureaucracy.

A former prosecutor himself, the former Davao City Mayor obviously is getting impatient at the pace of investigations on the specific case of the botched operations involving the tons of shipment of dangerous illegal drugs substance right coming out from Customs itself.

Actually, there is no need to reinvent the Customs Bureau. It only needs CMTA to be implemented in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law.