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The Bureau of Customs is streamlining the processes of its Accounts Management Office for ease of doing business and improve trade facilitiation
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Following its transfer to the Post Clearance Audit Group, assistant commissioner Atty. Vincent Philip Maronilla issued a memorandum to the AMO “stating that there’s only one evaluation that will be conducted for the entire process” of applications for accreditation of importers and registration of customs brokers
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BOC will also be revising AMO’s procedures, shifting the work of ensuring compliance with the bureau
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After rationalizing AMO’s processes, Maronilla said it will be transferred to the “office where it truly belongs”, most likely the Assessment and Operations Coordinating Group
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) is streamlining the processes of its Accounts Management Office (AMO) as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts on improving the ease of doing business and trade facilitation, according to assistant commissioner Atty. Vincent Philip Maronilla.
Following its transfer to the Post Clearance Audit Group (PCAG), Maronilla said he has issued a memorandum to the AMO “stating that there’s only one evaluation that will be conducted for the entire process.”
Maronilla, who is head of PCAG, said in their review of certain processes, the bureau was “able to determine that there are a lot of overlapping” procedures, such as in AMO, wherein an application for accreditation undergoes several evaluations.
AMO is the unit under BOC that processes and approves applications for accreditation of importers and registration of customs brokers.
He explained that under the existing system, applying for an accreditation takes multi-layers of assessment: a pre-evaluation, an evaluation by an evaluator, and then by a supervising evaluator, and then it goes to the AMO chief for another evaluation, and then to the Intelligence Group, which was the group it was under before it was transferred to PCAG in early June.
“That’s what we’re trying to streamline now at the Bureau of Customs,” Maronilla said in a panel discussion during the recent 2nd Stakeholders’ Summit by the United Portusers Confederation of the Philippines.
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BOC will also be revising AMO’s procedures, Maronilla noted.
He said the plan is that requirements will be submitted only during the initial application, then for renewal, “magtiwalaan na lang tayo (We will have to rely on trust).”
BOC will just be requiring importers and customs brokers to give an undertaking that there have been no changes in the information they provided in their initial application.
“What we’ll do is that we’ll pass on all… names of your incorporators and all these companies to the different law enforcement agencies and let them provide us feedback. Then we’ll notify you if that’s correct or not. If not, then you reason out, you have to explain why you did not update us and we will be going from there,” Maronilla explained in mixed English and Filipino.
“We’re going to shift the work to us instead of on you. So that is the goal of commissioner (Ariel Nepomuceno) that’s why he transferred the AMO and changing the whole system,” he added.
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BOC will also set up a point person for each chamber of commerce “where they can deal with their AMO concerns until we’re able to cleanse the entire process.”
After rationalizing AMO’s processes, Maronilla said it will be transferred to the “office where it truly belongs,” which would most likely be the Assessment and Operations Coordinating Group.”
“But that would be a new AMO, that will be a new accreditation process, one that’s not only less burdensome, if not not burdensome at all, to our stakeholders, but would assist them in their trade facilitation,” Maronilla said.
BOC through Customs Memorandum Order No. 10-2026 has transferred the direct supervision and control over AMO to PCAG’s Trade Information and Risk Analysis Office (TIRAO).
TIRAO is one of the two operating units of PCAG whose functions include, among others, the review of available trade data to determine compliance markers of industry and set benchmarks for the purpose of developing an audit program, helped develop the Computer-Aided Risk Management System that determines import transactions that pose revenue-related red flags, recommends the potential priority audit candidates.
BOC recently assigned Atty. Christopher Dy Buco as acting chief of AMO, replacing Atty. Jonathan Mengullo, who is now Collection Division chief at BOC-Manila International Container Port.
READ: BOC reassigns 3 lawyers in latest shuffle
Prior to its move to PCAG, AMO’s direct supervision and control had been moved to different BOC groups and offices several times previously, until it was returned to the IG in 2017.— Roumina Pablo
