The Trade Department wants to amend rules that will make product testing more relevant and a reliable tool to assure that imported products conform to the specific quality requirement set by the Philippine government.
The proposal came in the wake of the 20,000 metric tons of steel shipment brought into the Philippines that allegedly lacked proper testing, prompting the Trade Department to withdraw the import clearance certificate issued to a Chinese company.
A government official said the shipment of Mannage Resources Trading Corp. lacked metal tags that prevented the Philippine government from tracing its origin from China.
“At first they told us that only 200 rebars were missing the tags but they eventually admitted that they have re-attached more than 10,000 tags to the shipment but most of the products still lack the required tags,” he said.
He said the Chinese company refused to have the shipment undergo a second sampling procedure using the Philippine National Standards. The procedure under PNS 49:2002 calls for one sample per 2,000 pieces (20 metric tons) of the shipment.
The company is still relying on the result of the testing that followed Trade’s rules that require the use of only three samples to represent the entire shipment.
The Bureau of Product Standards when processing an ICC application is guided by the provisions of the the Standards Law, Department Administrative Order 05: 2008 and the relevant Philippine National Standards and their implementing guidelines.