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By Dennis D. Estopace And Niel V. Mugas, Reporters
First of 3 parts
ILIGAN CITY: The nib of Vice Mayor Henry
Dy’s silver Parker stopped an inch above the check he was signing
when told the new owners of the National Steel Corp. were able to
pay the Bureau of Customs here P101 million last month.
“That’s impossible,” Dy told The Manila
Times at his office here, the two-inch-thick checks on his mahogany
desk temporarily forgotten. “They haven’t operated commercially
yet and they still haven’t paid the city for taxes.”
Dy was referring to the new owners of the
country’s biggest steel maker, Indian-owned Global Steelworks
International Inc. (GSII), which has yet to pay the Iligan City
government some P177 million in real-property taxes alone.
Councilor Alfredo R. Busico, who was in Dy’s
office on the second floor of the new city hall, told The Times that
the amount consisted of back taxes for 2004.
“We’re not yet talking about taxes on the
machinery but just where the plant sits or is located,” Busico
said. Including these and other arrears that the National Steel
Corp. owes the Iligan City government, the amount that the company
should cough up would reach P800 million, Busico added.
“The city began to negotiate with the new
owners, but they [GSII] were able to get concessions and brought the
amount down,” Busico said.
He said the company paid the city some P22
million last year. As goodwill, the city passed a resolution giving
the GSII four amnesties on business taxes. The amnesty ended April
15.
“The GSII and city officials agreed that the
company would pay in installment of P38 million every quarter,” Dy
said.
He said the city assessors’ office told him
that as of April, the GSII owes the city P63 million. He added that
if the company pays it all, the city would give a 10-percent
discount, or P6.3 million.
Hence, Dy was skeptical when told that the GSII,
which bought the National Steel Corp. two years ago and received
several incentives from the government, also received foreign ships
in the port and unloaded raw materials on its Custom Bonded
Warehouse (CBW).
His lips quivered when told Customs executives
here reported the GSII was on time in paying duties and taxes for
the use of the CBW.
“It’s now past May 15, and they haven’t
met their obligations to the city,” Dy said over a cellular-phone
call to The Times.
The arrival of these ships, the CBW, and payment
of duties and taxes to government agencies became the subject of a
probe by Customs officials in Manila who alleged that the GSII is
into smuggling, despite the incentives given by the national and
local government.
Warehouse 12
Bearing Mission Order 006-2005, issued by the
Bureau of Customs IEG unit Enforcement and Security Services,
Customs officials who went here in April uncovered considerable
leeway given to the GSII on top of other incentives it got from the
Iligan City government and the Customs.
For one, the GSII got swift approval of its
application to operate the CBW, or Warehouse 12.
A steel industry group leader who requested
anonymity said former Customs Commissioner George Jereos may have
committed grave abuse of discretion when the bureau approved the
GSII’s application to operate a CBW although he was already at the
end of his term.
A CBW, according to the Bureau of Customs
website, is a place to receive, store and “take custody of general
cargoes, under bond, for exportation, transfer to another CBW, or
for local consumption, in the same state and condition the cargoes
were when imported.”
The law stipulates that a Customs commissioner
can approve the operation of a CBW only if he is staying at his post
for at least two months.
Jereos, however, approved Global’s application
through an endorsement on January 13, 2005, or one month after he
left his post. The Times tried to get Jereos’s side but was told
he was in a hospital.
The Bureau of Customs probe team reported a
lackluster operation by the GSII of its CBW even during Jereos’s
last month and under the new commissioner, Alberto Lina, by March.
Bending over backward
Ana Marie Maglasang, special assistant to
Enforcement Security Services Director Nestor Gualberto, said in her
report given to The Times that Customs District 10 officials bent
over backward several times to help the GSII.
For one, there wasn’t an Account Officer for
the CBW as expressed in Customs Administrative Order 2-91. This
officer, the report said, ensures that the warehouse operator
complies with Customs regulations. Maglasang said the absence of an
account officer “seriously prejudiced the interest of the
government to collect the duties and taxes due.”
She noted that several import bills of entries
that the officer ensures are in order were “not in proper order”
and that then-Customs Collector Lourdes Villar Mangaoang approved
GSII’s request for deferred payment of duties and taxes.
Magalang’s report said seven shipments of raw
materials should have secured for the government $45 million (P2.475
billion) in duties and taxes from February to April.
Her report comes at a time when the government
is trying, by increasing the collection of taxes, to plug a more
than P100-billion budget deficit.
Deferred payment
Glicerio Suprenales, a GSII representative and
lawyer, heaped praises on Customs District 10 officials who he said
“were very understanding” of the company’s delay in filing the
import bills of entries and the deferred payment.
“Sometimes we are delayed because
documentation needs time,” Suprenales told The Times. “Of
course, we fail to file some importations, but we always inform the
port collector here of the cause of the delay and we are doing our
very best to produce documents so that the entries could be
filed.”
Newly installed District 10 Customs Collector
Roberto M. Sacramento told The Times that the practice of deferred
payment applies to some cases.
“But when you talk about manufacturing bonded
warehouses [like GSII’s], the deferred payment doesn’t apply,
because in the first place, they are tax-exempt,” Sacramento said.
He explained that the GSII is “required only
to file the entries and liquidate whatever it imported after some
time, which is part of the conditions in the bonds it is supposed to
get.”
He said the duties and taxes are guaranteed by
the bonds that the GSII gets, “so that it normally has nine months
to liquidate whatever it imported and another extension of three
months.”
Suprenales said that of the required
P800-million bond, the GSII has paid P200,000.
“Within that period the GSII has to
liquidate,” Sacramento said. “If it fails [to do so] then the
bonding company would be jointly and solitarily liable for the
duties and taxes it may have to pay [under the bond agreement].”
Sacramento was told that the Bureau of
Customs-District 10 staff has given notices of abandonment to the
GSII for three shipments. The notices, copies of which were given
The Times, told GSII president Sushant C. Das that his company
“has not filed the import entries nor paid the duties, taxes and
charges due them.”
Sacramento said the Bureau of Customs gives a
notice of abandonment to the owner of the raw materials stored in a
CBW when the owner fails to file an entry within 30 days. The notice
informs the delinquent owner that the government will assume
ownership of the raw materials.
(To be continued)
Part 2 | Part
3 |
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