The Philippine Economic Zone Authority and the Bureau of Customs signed Tuesday a data sharing agreement aimed at enhancing the monitoring of movements of economic zone goods under the Electronic Transfer of Containerized Cargo system.
The agreement allows PEZA to have access in tracking, monitoring and auditing the location and condition of cargoes and obtain real-time alarms on diversion and tampering of cargoes. This is to ensure that importation and exportation of tax and duty-free goods arrive and reach the intended PEZA economic zones or port of loading.
“We subscribe to the BOC’s objectives of trade facilitation as our way of enhancing the competitiveness of the Philippines for trade and investments. To do this, we believe that digitalization is the key, increased adoption of automation, so that we can enhance our ease of doing business and facilitate even more the movement of cargoes of our locators,” said PEZA director-general Tereso Panga.
The agreement also promotes the integration, interoperability and interconnection of both agencies’ respective systems in direct compliance to Executive Order 18 that establishes Green Lanes for strategic investments.
“We firmly believe that sharing secured data with PEZA will enable us to coordinate our efforts and drive collective improvements toward seamless trade facilitation. Surely, this will pave the way for improved day-to-day operations and will further buttress our trade facilitation performances,” said BOC Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio.
PEZA reiterated its full support to the implementation of Electronic Zone Transfer System as contained under Joint Memorandum Order No. 2-2015 dated 24 July 2015.