The Finance Department said it will need more time to issue the implementing rules and regulations for the recently enacted Customs Modernization and Tariff Act.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez told reporters in a recent interview the agency would need 60 days to study the law and release the IRR.
“I don’t know about the time frame, but certainly we should give it at least one or two months,” Domiguez said, adding the new law is about 200 pages long.
Republic Act 10863 or CMTA was signed into law by former President Benigno Aquino III in May to update the Tariff and Customs Code which was last amended in 1978 and modernize the operations of the Bureau of Customs.
BOC is the second largest revenue-collecting agency of the government, next to the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
The Finance Department earlier said the law would further improve the agency’s goal to curb smuggling.
The law prescribes reforms such as electronic processing of shipment of documents, streamlining of export and import procedures, simplifying processes for seizure and disposition of illegal goods and steeper penalties for violations.
CMTA also exempts employees of the BOC from the Salary Standardization Law to grant them relatively higher pay than other government workers.
Another key provision in the law is the increase in the de minimis value to P10,000 from P10 for articles brought into the country duty-free through the postal office, by courier companies or by hand.
The measure provides for an automatic indexation of the amounts every three years to account for inflation to permanently do away with the outdated values.
The law also has a provision raising the amount of exemption for a ‘balikbayan’ box to P150,000 from the previous P10,000. The same amount of exemption will be granted to returning overseas Filipino workers.
Former Customs commissioner Alberto Lina earlier conducted public consultations with several stakeholders in drafting the IRR before their term ended on June 30.
Lina said former Finance secretary Cesar Purisima asked them to draft the IRR,
Purisima instructed officials to let Dominguez review in advance the issuance of the IRR of CMTA and other enacted laws such as the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act.