Wednesday, January 16, 2008 SUV registrations now in Manila; stolen vehicles traced in Cebu
APART from smuggled units, stolen vehicles that were later apprehended in Metro Manila were also found to have been registered with the Land Transportation Office (LTO) in Cebu.
As one corrective measure, all sports utility vehicles (SUVs) will now be registered in Manila and no longer with the district offices of the LTO, Central Visayas LTO Director Raul Aguilus said in a conference.
This order will remain in force while the controversy on the allegedly rampant smuggling of vehicles in Cebu, now the subject of a congressional inquiry, remains unresolved.
Lawyer Teofilo E. Guadiz III has furnished LTO Cebu City registrar Alita Pulga with a list of three allegedly stolen cars that were registered in Cebu.
Guadiz serves as the director of the Investigation, Security and Law Enforcement Service (ISLES) of the Department of Transportation and Communications.
The cars are a Toyota Revo registered in November 2003, a Mitsubishi registered in February 2005 and another Mitsubishi registered in January 2002.
Clearance needed
Pulga, however, said that these were registered by her predecessor and before she was assigned to the LTO Cebu City district office.
She wondered how these supposedly carnapped vehicles were registered, when a clearance from the PNP Traffic Management Group—proof that a vehicle wasn’t stolen—is a requirement for registration.
Meanwhile, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has warned that accredited assemblers are only allowed to rebuild trucks and not cars, now a controversial issue in the country.
Director Asteria Caberte said that Executive Order 156 authorizes the DTI to accredit truck rebuilding centers, but that those accredited must “stick to trucks.”
Government is not allowing the rebuilding of cars to protect the local car manufacturing industry, she said, adding that another order can perhaps be issued to remind accredited assemblers of the rules.
“It is quite unfair to the other players. There’s no fair competition here,” Caberte said.
Guadiz told reporters last Monday that he found violations of the DTI guidelines. There is a rampant assembly of passenger cars, sports utility vehicles, vans and other vehicles that do not fall under the truck category, he added.
Seminar
In June 2005, the LTO, Bureau of Customs Port of Cebu, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Import Services (BIS) conducted a seminar for customs brokers and importers on following DTI rules related to EO 156.
Director Luis Catibayan had said that while it is true that only trucks can be assembled under the DTI rules, other vehicles can still be rebuilt—as long as the assembler has a permit from the Board of Investments under the government’s car development program.
District Collector Ricardo Belmonte said the certificate of payment (CP) of duties and taxes issued for engine and chassis are strictly “for replacement parts” only.
If these were registered as “whole units” or rebuilt vehicles, then that’s already an LTO matter, he added.
According to Belmonte, the scanning unit at the Port of Cebu is one of the most efficient customs groups.
For his part, customs broker Ricky Gantuangco is urging the government to abolish the ad valorem tax it imposed on imported vehicles.
“To save money, some businessmen smuggle certain kinds of cars,” Gantuangco said. (EOB)
