Government to harmonize tariff codes

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Finance (DOF), together with various trade regulatory government agencies (TRGAs), will harmonize the tariff codes used by government to classify goods in order to facilitate trade and improve ease of doing business in the country.

Finance Undersecretary and anti-red tape czar Gil Beltran, in a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, said the classification and harmonization of tariff codes would be done through a series of workshops among 42 agencies that regulate traded products.

The workshops will be facilitated by the Tariff Commission (TC), in coordination with the DOF Inter-Agency Business Process Interoperability (IABPI) Team and the Bureau of Import Service of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Beltran said the workshop series would run weekly for a total of five sessions from September to October at the TC office in Quezon City.

The harmonization of tariff codes was one of the agreements made during the April 2018 meeting of the National Single Window (NSW) Steering Committee, which is headed by Dominguez.

According to Beltran, the data gathered from the workshop would be used for TradeNet, the government’s online import and export permit platform.

“The results of the workshops will be used as base data of the tariff code and commodities that will be used by the  TC, Bureau of Customs, and the regulatory agencies on TradeNet,” he said.

Launched in December, TradeNet is part of the DOF’s anti-red tape initiatives.

Beltran said the system would enable traders to apply for their permits online, and allow regulatory agencies to receive applications and send feedback real-time.

The platform is expected to minimize the costs of doing business and cut the processing time for the issuance of import and export permits, the DOF said.

He said the website would initially allow import and export applications for rice, sugar,  used motor vehicles, chemicals (toluene), frozen meat, medicines, and cured tobacco.

Eventually, the DOF said the TradeNet platform would link 76 TRGAs through a common database.

It is also intended to serve as the Philippines’ link to the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), a regional initiative that aims to speed up cargo clearances and promote economic integration by enabling the electronic exchange of border documents among the organization’s 10 member-states.