Statement of BOC Commissioner John P. Sevilla on the Publication of Import Data for December 2013
Today, we at the Bureau of Customs take what we intend to be the first in many steps to improve the transparency and accountability of our operations.
We are publishing a list of almost[1] every importation into the Philippines in December 2013. Going forward, we intend to publish this list every month.
Each item in the list represents a specific quantity (measured by weight) of a specific item that was imported by a specific importer on a specific day. The list- 88,006 items in December 2013 alone- is organized by major product groups, using the Harmonized Standard (HS) Code classification system. For each item, we include information such as a description of the item imported, its HS code number and standard HS code description, what country the item came from, its value, and the amount of duties and taxes collected on that item.
The data can be downloaded from the following links:
www.customs.gov.ph/import-
The list is in Excel format. To allow faster downloading of a very large amount of data, the list has been divided into five separate files, with each file containing the data on import items within a range of HS codes. The files cannot be modified without hacking, but the data in them can be copied and pasted into a separate file for individual analysis and calculations.
If members of the public have specific information about actual values of specific imports which are very different from what we are using, we hope that they will share that information with us in writing, by e-mail to import.valuation@customs.