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SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co won the P57.387-million contract to plan the government’s cross-border e-invoicing system
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The system will require foreign exporters to issue invoices on a single government-run platform
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Importers may pay an annual registration fee plus a fee for every e-invoice
SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co. (SGV) has won the contract to plan the Philippine government’s cross-border electronic invoicing (CEI) system, a platform meant to curb smuggling and undervaluation of imported goods.
The Public-Private Partnership Center of the Philippines (PPP Center) awarded the P57.387-million consultancy contract to SGV in a notice dated October 12.
As project preparation and transaction adviser, SGV will:
- Assess the economic and financial viability of the CEI system
- Determine whether it can be pursued as a public-private partnership (PPP), and recommend the best PPP setup, taking into account the concerns of all stakeholders and existing rules
- Prepare bid documents and support the Department of Finance (DOF) through the bidding process and contract signing, up to financial close if the project goes the PPP route
The CEI system will be a single electronic invoicing platform controlled by the Philippine government. Verified and registered foreign exporters will issue electronic invoices for all goods shipped to the Philippines through the platform.
These e-invoices will be shared in real time with the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Department of Agriculture, Department of Trade and Industry and other agencies. This will let the government check that taxes and duties paid match what was actually shipped.
Under AO No. 23, the DOF will engage a CEI system provider with the legal, financial and technical capability to run a secure web-based system for exporter registration and e-invoice creation.
The project proposes a user-pays mechanism. Importers would pay an annual fee to register as users of the system, plus a fee for every e-invoice generated.
The system aims to stop smuggling, misdeclaration and undervaluation of imports.
According to the project’s terms of reference, the DOF found a P1.8-trillion discrepancy in 2017 between the volume of goods foreign exporters reported shipping to the Philippines and the volume the country recorded as imported. The gap widened from 25.1% in 2017 to 26.8% in 2018, and was blamed on misdeclaration and undervaluation using fake documents.
The DOF estimated that the 2017 discrepancy alone meant about P231 billion in lost revenue, or around 2% of the country’s gross domestic product.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. approved the CEI system, along with pre-border technical verification (PTV), in 2024 through Administrative Order No. 23.
Once in place, the CEI system will add a new compliance step for imports. Foreign suppliers will need to register and issue invoices on the government platform, and importers will face new registration and per-invoice fees. Customs brokers and forwarders should expect closer matching of invoices against import declarations, which could mean more scrutiny for shipments with valuation gaps.
