SBMA tightens rules on importation of luxury vehicles

The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority on Tuesday said it has put in place new measures that would prevent traders from smuggling luxury vehicles into the Philippines through the Subic Freeport. SBMA Import-Export Processing Division head Red Tuazon, said most of the steps they have implemented are meant to improve the method of documenting the movements of the luxury vehicles that are coming in to the Freeport from other countries. The agency increased its monitoring of vehicle importation after some P80 million worth of luxury cars managed to exit Subic Freeport without being assessed their correct taxes last March. Tuazon said identification of the make and model of motor vehicles is now required of importers for better monitoring of importation. Auditors have also been hired to reconcile liquidation reports and books of the locators importing motor vehicles against ImpEx records. Physical inventory has also been conducted on more than 30 locators. “There have been cases when gatepasses were spurious. They photocopied the gatepasses and altered information on entries which they then present at the gate. These are afterwards passed on as a form of liquidation," Tuazon said. He added that since the ImpEx was granted permission by the Seaport Department to access the records of gatepasses, they are able to verify their legitimacy. This eventually led to the elimination of spurious or recycled gatepasses being attached to liquidation reports of locators. “Now it is useless for them to do that because we can now conduct a verification process," he said. Tuazon said all these will ascertain that proper tax values are assessed and collected, and government revenues are protected. SBMA, Tuazon said, has already cut down the number of firms engaged in the importation of vehicles from 80 to about 35 companies after going through a thorough check on the importers’ records. - GMANews.TV