The Philippine National Police has vowed to streamline the process of securing permits for the importation of regulated chemicals and other materials used by exporters.
But Cebu exporters are not completely satisfied with the PNP’s response, said Philexport Cebu executive director Federico Escalona.
He said members of the Confederation Philippine Exporters Foundation, Inc. (Philexport Cebu) are waiting to see if the PNP will implement what they are promising.
The Bureau of Customs (BOC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), on the other hand, have already addressed concerns raised by the exporters.
“All have been addressed, except PNP and PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency), where we have similar issues. In line with regulations, we just want that our exporters using chemicals are not given a hard time getting permits,” Escalona said.
In a Sept. 24 letter to Philexport Cebu president Nelson Bascones, Civil Security Group Police director Elmer Soria said the PNP was working on cutting bureaucratic red tape.
“We will not stop until we have fully streamlined our processes to provide a regulatory service that exemplifies transparency, integrity and transactional efficiency,” he wrote.
The letter was in response to Philexport Cebu’s position paper against redundancies, duplications and overlapping of chemical importation regulations in various government agencies.
The document cited the bottlenecks caused by the “lack of coordination between the implementing offices.”
Five government agencies were cited, namely, FDA, DDB, PDEA, PNP, and BOC. Philexport Cebu said the overlapping regulations in these agencies and their lack of coordination have caused delays in product deliveries, resulting in losses to importers and exporters alike.
Bascones followed up the position paper with a letter to then Interior secretary Manuel Roxas II in August.
In his letter, Bascones cited the rules and regulations under PNP Memorandum Circular 2012-009, which requires importers and buyers of 41 regulated chemicals to “secure from the Firearms and Explosives Office five permits, i.e. to import, to unload, to move, to transport, and to purchase such chemicals.”
Bascones said the memorandum put strict limits on exporters who use several of the controlled chemicals in the PNP listing, such as muriatic acid and nitric acid.
Thus, firms are finding difficulty in purchasing these chemicals and are experiencing delays.
“Alarm bells have been raised through the Export Development Council (EDC), warning that if the strict permitting requirements (which can only be done at Camp Crame in Manila) of the PNP will continue, the export industry will suffer losses, not only in terms of capital but jobs as well,” Bascones said in his letter.
He recommended that the PNP relegate processing of permits to regional offices or hubs, review and reclassify their list of controlled chemicals and possibly de-list several chemicals used by exporters, and that the PNP and other export agencies gain access to profiles of the permit applicants to “facilitate and expedite issuance of permits and licenses.”
In his letter to Bascones, Soria said deregulating some of the chemicals would be a “quick fix,” but would not be a long-term solution.
“The PNP, through the Firearms and Explosives Office that is under the functional supervision of the Civil Service Group, we are of the firm conviction that our national government should stand by its security sector in ensuring that threats to peace, public safety and national security are effectively contained and addressed,” he said.