FILIPINO banana exporters are seeking President Marcos’s intervention to unburden them from customs fees that render uncompetitive the value of the country’s prized yellow fruit against other banana-producing countries.
The Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) said certain penalties and fees imposed by the Customs bureau “burden” exporters, who are forced to “absorb” additional costs amid stiff competition with other foreign banana producers and exporters.
PBGEA Executive Director Stephen Antig pointed out, for instance, that the P5,000 penalty imposed by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) per error or correction of entry penalty has become a “problem” to banana exporters.
The BOC imposes a P5,000 per clerical error in a goods declaration as part of its mandate under Republic Act 10863 or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act.
A clerical error is defined by the BOC under its Customs Administrative Order 01-2020, as inadvertent errors either mechanical or electronic, that were committed unintentionally by a declarant, such as an exporter, which “occurred notwithstanding the maintenance of internal controls necessary to avoid such errors.”
Examples of clerical errors include misspelling and or incorrect input of data while drafting, copying or transposing a document such as information regarding port of destination, number of packages, quantity of shipment, among others.
Antig explained that correction of information stipulated in an export declaration (ED) is hard to avoid for banana exporters since they can only determine certain information, such as final number of boxes to be shipped, a few hours before a vessel’s departure.
“This would mean you have to re-lodge and correct the entries of the originally filed Export Declaration [ED]. For every error/correction of entry, the exporter is slapped with P5,000. More or less, there are usually 3-5 entries/data to be corrected costing the exporter an additional P15,000 to P25,000 per re-lodgement,” Antig added.
Antig noted that before, banana exporters were required to file an ED 48 hours prior to the departure of a vessel. The timeline has been reduced by BOC to two hours prior to the departure of the vessel after a series of appeals made by banana exporters, he added.
“But, this is still an additional cost to the exporter. Definitely, this is an additional burden to exporters as they absorb this additional cost,” he said.
“Banana companies are saddled with the re-lodgement fees charged by the BOC, especially if one ED is revised several times,” he added.
As the Philippines continue to lose market share in Asian banana exports, PBGEA called on the government to suspend the correction fees being imposed by the BOC to keep the export price of the country’s bananas competitive against foreign countries.
PBGEA said the government, particularly Marcos, must revisit Executive Order (EO) 554 series of 2006 issued by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
EO 554 directed relevant government agencies to abolish fees and charges imposed on export-related permits and clearances to improve the competitiveness of the country’s export products.
Antig argued that the re-lodgement fees being imposed by the BOC should be terminated given the provisions of EO 554.
“Note, EO 554 series of 2006 was not actually implemented. We need something like this in these difficult times,” he said.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture and Organization (FAO) reported that the Philippines’s share in Asian banana exports continued to shrink, plunging to just 60 percent last year from 90 percent amid growing competition from neighboring producing countries.
The FAO said the Philippines’s stature as Asia’s key banana exporter is now being rocked by persisting production woes worsened by stiff competition from growing banana suppliers in the region.
The FAO added that the Philippines banana exports last year plunged by 37 percent year-on-year to 2.4 million metric tons (MMT) from 3.8 MMT (Related story: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2022/09/13/phl-share-in-asian-banana-exports-down-to-60/)
Despite shrinking a market share in Asian banana exports, the Philippines remained as the world’s second-largest exporter of bananas for the fourth consecutive year in 2021. (Related story: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2022/05/30/phl-still-second-largest-banana-exporter-fao/)