WB funds $104-M customs modernization

A technologically advanced customs systems and processes can be partially realized by 2023 and fully operational by 2024 as a modernization project supported by the World Bank will be implemented in full swing this year, according to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez.

During the launch of the Customs Modernization Project, Dominguez said a highly efficient Bureau of Customs (BOC) is critical to the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic as trade volume and revenue performance is expected to rise.

New information and communications technology (ICT) tools will also enable the bureau to carry out its functions amid prevailing mobility restrictions.

“With the cooperation of relevant agencies and the support of the World Bank, we fully intend to complete this project in the shortest possible time. We expect the project’s partial operation by 2023 and full operation by 2024,” said Dominguez, also the chair of the project steering committee.

“When this project is done, we expect to see more efficient port operations, dramatic gains in reducing corruption in the agency, and a major increase in our trade volumes. The project will allow us to be at the cutting edge in the application of new technologies to achieve the best revenue performance,” he said.

Dominguez said the reforms that would be instituted in the bureau with the implementation of the project will be “fully functional and irreversible.”

The project, supported by $104.38 million financing from the World Bank, aims to transform Customs into a worldclass agency by streamlining and upgrading its systems and processes through the use of new information and communications technology.

The World Bank has been engaging with projects for the improvement of Customs functions since the ’90s.

Ndiamé Diop, World Bank country director for Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, said the reforms implemented with the project would lessen the transaction costs for traders, reduce time to import and export, and improve the predictability in the processes.

“This new projects ambitions to propel customs administration to the global frontier of best practices,” he said.

Specifically, the Customs Processing System (CPS) will streamline and rationalize processes and procedures in the bureau and significantly reduce face-to-face transactions.

“The automation of processes by the CPS will increase accountability and reduce significant amount of face-to-face interaction and reduce delays at the border,” said Diop.

The CPS will also enhance intelligence targeting and discovery of high-risk cargo.

“We expect it to reduce unregistered foreign trade and expand the country’s tax and duty base,” said Diop.

The system’s remote image capability inspection will support the bureau’s anti-corruption drive as it eliminates faceto-face interactions between traders and officials examining radiographic images of cargo.

As the CPS will centralize and automate a number of Customs functions, this can also ensure that the bureau’s functions will continue to be carried out even if mobility and staffing restrictions, for some reason, will have to be implemented again in the future.