THE BUREAU of Customs (BOC) will require the electronic filing of all manifests for air cargo starting May 11.
Customs Memorandum Order No. 10-2015 issued by Customs Commissioner John Phillip P. Sevilla on April 10 mandated the use of electronic inward foreign manifest
(e-IFM) as well as electronic consolidated cargo manifest (e-CCM).
The e-IFM is the electronic list of house and/or master airway bills containing information about cargo arriving on a certain flight. The e-CCM, on the other hand, contains information on cargo covered by master airway bills.
The e-CCM must be filed for every master airway bills consigned to airlines, air express operators, air freight forwarders and de-consolidators, the BOC said, noting that only house airway bills have ultimate consignees while master airway bills do not have such.
Under CMO 10-2015, airlines and air express operators must submit their flight schedules to the aircraft operations divisions of airports’ respective Customs offices at least a month in advance to facilitate e-IFM filing.
The e-IFM and e-CCM submissions must be done through the facilities of BOC-accredited value-added service providers. Airlines and air express operators are required to submit e-IFMs for each flight arrival, while submissions of e-CCMs will also be required from air freight forwarders and de-consolidators.
The cut-off time to submit e-IFMs is upon the aircraft’s arrival if the port of loading is within Asia. Outside of Asia, the cutoff time is four hours before the aircraft arrives.
Late e-IFM submission will be slapped a penalty of P10,000.
As for e-CCMs, the deadline of submission is one hour after the aircraft arrives in the case of those with e-IFMs filed on time. For those with late e-IFM filings, their respective e-CCMs will still be accepted without penalties as long as the e-CCM would be submitted within 24 hours after the e-IFM was registered.
The Customs bureau warned that all un-manifested cargo “shall be subject to forfeiture,” as mandated under Section 2530 (G) of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines.