Wednesday, July 23, 2008 Used car dealers ask Arroyo to save 'dying' industry
THE Cebu Used Motor Vehicles Association Inc. (Cumvai) is appealing to President Arroyo to help their industry to survive, especially in fast-tracking the processing and issuance of Certificate of Payments (CP) of duties and taxes of imported vehicles.
Cumvai’s 60 members said in an open letter to Arroyo that vehicles sold need to be registered with the Land Transportation Office (LTO) before being used; a CP is required for vehicle registration.
The group said that without the registration, they cannot sell their products.
They said that they find the present practice of transmitting data for the issuance of CPs too circuitous and contradicts the principle of decentralization.
Data such as chassis and engine numbers are transmitted from the Vehicle Importation Compliance Monitoring Unit (Vicmu) at the Bureau of Customs (BOC) Port of Cebu to the Vicmu Central Office in Manila. From there, it goes to LTO 7 for the registration of vehicles, they said.
“This practice creates too much delay in the release of CPs even after they have already paid the required amounts to the government agencies,” the letter read.
For example, the first step in the whole process is doing first and second endorsements to the BOC’s Value Reference Information System (VRIS) through fax.
These endorsements, however, have to be faxed through the VRIS Cebu.
“Imagine the numerous importers transacting business per day multiplied to man hours spent just for this particular and additional layer of transaction. This results in delays of our shipment being held at the port and additional expenses such as unnecessary storage fee for it cannot be released in due time,” the letter added.
Cumvai informed the President that they don’t need this VRIS transaction as customs officials at the Port of Cebu are already capable of doing the job.
Costly
“This additional layer of processing and sending documents to Vicmu and VRIS in central office for final approval entails additional payment for (importers) and more processing time since documents are sent there via courier service,” they added.
During the hearing of the House committee on good government last April 24, Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales said they are implementing the electronic transmittal of data to fast-track the processing.
“Where is the so-called electronic transmittal of data that the government is promoting? Where is decentralization here?” they asked.
Cumvai also told Arroyo that before these things happened, their association contributed around P180 million a month in duties and taxes to the government, a fact which BOC officials can reportedly attest to.
They added that the “used motor industry” is the source of income of about 5,000 breadwinners of a family of four to six each.
But because of the unnecessary layers of customs service that delayed transactions, 10 percent of their members already stopped operation and almost all of them have laid off about 50 percent of their total employees. (EOB)
