Philexport calls on Customs to review policy on clerical errors

Exporters said they were burdened by the penalties slapped by the government for clerical errors in the declaration of their products for exports , especially when these were “honest mistakes” that at times were caused by factors beyond their control.

The Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) wants the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to review and possibly suspend its policy on clerical errors.

The policy, which was approved last January, imposes a fine of P5,000 for every clerical error in the export declaration, which may include misspellings, according to Customs Administrative Order No. 01-2020, which stated that this was “to avoid repetition.”

The BOC also slaps a surcharge equivalent to 250 percent of the taxes that are supposed to be paid for export products when they are found misdeclared, misclassified or undervalued, based on the same administrative order.

In a letter to Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero, Philexport president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said exporters understood the intention behind the said policy but it was “causing exporters huge financial burden on inadvertent errors.”

He said exporters sometimes needed to make changes in their export declaration for reasons beyond their control, such as foreign exchange fluctuations, since the applicable value for a shipment could be determined only upon the vessel’s departure.

Another reason is the buyer’s request for changes in the description of goods. Export declarations also need to be amended when vessels are delayed due to bad weather, malfunction, void sailing, and similar circumstances.

In a statement, the business group said it wanted the BOC to create a criteria that would determine which were honest mistakes, and which were not.

Moreover, instead of a P5,000 penalty for each clerical error, Philexport said there should be a schedule of fines wherein the first offense would not be slapped a penalty and that penalties would be imposed on the succeeding offense starting at P1,000 per error.

Ortiz-Luis sought for a definition of what qualified as a clerical error. He said errors in spellings and abbreviations should not be penalized since they were often “a result of the rush to comply with deadlines or just pure honest mistakes.”

He said the policy should be suspended while under review “to prevent the further bleeding of exporters, especially the MSMEs (micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises) that are still trying to recover” from the effects of the pandemic.INQ