Major maritime stakeholders have asked President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. to immediately revoke an order from the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) imposing an additional container monitoring system in current port operations.

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Seventeen groups representing key areas of the maritime industry have joined forces in an urgent open letter to the President, which was published in a major daily on Monday, Jan. 24, to argue that the proposed additional container monitoring system and PPA-Administrative Order No. 04-2021 are unnecessary.

“The implementation of the TOP-CRMS/ECSSSF (Trusted Operator Program-Container Registry Monitoring System/ Empty Container Storage Shared Service Facility) has consistently and vehemently opposed by various stakeholders since the first public consultation held on June 15, 2021,” the group of stakeholders stated in its open letter.

According to the group's estimates, implementing AO 04-2021 will "result in a nearly 50-percent increase in the logistics cost of imported goods."

“The PPA fails to consider that the ultimate victims of these additional costs is the ordinary Filipino consumer, who is already bleeding from an inflation rate of 8.1 percent,” they pointed out.

As such, it noted that the implementation of TOP-CRMS/ECSSSF was "not designed to address smuggling" in the country.

“In a Trucking Summit organized by the PPA on January 16, 2023, it was categorically admitted by PPA officials that the TOP-CRMS was not designed to address smuggling, and that its relationship to smuggling is merely incidental,” they said.

Among those who signed the open letter were Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry In. (PCCI) President George T. Barcelon, Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII), and President Dr. Henry Lim Bon Liong, and Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (PHILEXPORT).

Also signing the open letter to the President were the heads of the Supply Chain Management Association of the Philippines (SCMAP), Philippine Association of Meat Processors In. (PAMPI), Philippine Multimodal Transport and Logistics Association Inc. (PMTLAI), Alliance of Truck Owners and Organizations (ACTOO), Alliance of Container Yard Operators of the Philippines (ACYOP), Association of International Shipping Lines In. (AISL), Association of Off-Dock CFS Operators of the Philippines (ACOP), Custom Brokers Federation of the Philippines (CBFP), Pasig Port Users United, Philippine Liner Shipping Association (PLSA), Philippine Ship Agents’ Association (PSAA), Port Users Confederation of the Philippines (PUCP), Practicing Customs Brokers Association of the Philippines (PCBAP), and the United Port Users Confederation of the Philippines (UPC).

The 17 signatories also claimed that the PPA held only one public consultation on June 15, 2021, before it issued PPA AO 04-2021, and that this consultation “only involved select stakeholders.”

It warned that “PPA’s failure to analyze the impact of TOPS-CRMS and coordinate with stakeholders could lead to a repeat of the 2014 port congestion fiasco.”

“In 2014, the lack of rigorous analysis of policy options and lack of proper coordination with stakeholders resulted in disastrous port congestion with an economic cost of at last P43.8 billion. The country simply cannot afford a repeat of the 2014 fiasco in these already troubled times,” said the stakeholders.

‘Give CRMS a chance’

In an earlier statement, PPA General Manager Jay Santiago explained that the TOP-CRMS will provide significant savings in logistics costs such as container deposit and missing empty containers.

"For as long as somebody is complaining, government has to come in and government has to address what is being complained of... Government's purpose is to make sure that everything is fair. We try to make sure that the playing field is fair... That's why we need to introduce regulations ,” said Santiago.

PPA said that under TOP-CRMS, importers must pay only a P980 container deposit insurance and monitoring fee, as well as a P3,408 empty container handling service fee, as opposed to a P30,000 container deposit in the current system.

"That is why we are working on ways to lower the incremental cost of transacting in the logistics chain and we are doing that, in our belief that the more we make the operations efficient, the more that we make it transparent, the more that we shorten the transaction process, our fellowmen will spend less," said the PPA general manager.

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