By Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has failed to integrate its reforms on ease of doing business, which could have improved the country’s ranking in the World Bank’s (WB) 2019 Ease of Doing Business (EODB) Report wherein the Philippines’ overall rank plummeted to 124 from 113 out of more than 190 countries surveyed.

Trade and Industry Undersecretary Rowel S. Barba said that World Bank did not consider the reforms submitted by the BOC because it did not provide the specific data on the number of days or exact period and cost in transacting with the agency.

“While they have some reforms, unfortunately they did not provide exact days and cost,” Barba said,

Until now, he said, it is still “open ended” at the BOC when one has to transact business with them.

During their last meeting with the former BOC Commissioner Isidro Lapenas, who was transferred to TESDA following the P11-billion illegal drugs shipment that elude his watch, the commissioner committed that the data on exact days and cost in doing business with BOC would be released by the end of this month.

He could not tell if the same commitment still holds true under the new Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero.

The study will determine the “time and motion” of transactions at the BOC. The study was a grant by the WB for BOC to also improve its IT systems.

‘We are just waiting for the new commissioner to settle down,” he said.

Barba said that the BOC data is important because it is the frontline agency in one EODB indicator on “Trading Across Borders” which also declined latest survey.

The country’s ranking in the “Trading Across Borders” indicator dropped by 2 percent, but had the BOC been able to submit the WB requirement this could have helped shore up the country’s overall ranking.

Barba, who is DTI undersecretary in charge of competitiveness, expressed optimism that BOC can provide the data by April to June next year so that their reforms can be counted in the next cycle of the World Bank’s EODB study.

Despite the plummeting ranking in competitiveness surveys, Barba said the government is sticking to its target to be in the top 20 percentile bracket by 2020.