Customs not responsible for price hike, says Towe

By GLORIA BAUAI
PAPUA New Guinea Customs chief commissioner David Towe has dismissed the view that customs intervention at the ports is causing the hike in price of goods and services in the country.
Towe said Customs duty was focused more on trade facilitation, rather than control, using an 80:10:10 rule.
“So almost 90 per cent of the containers come through customs without intervention which is a very important element of our work at the borders,” he said.
“We do the necessary documentary checks after cargo passes through to ensure that what the broker has declared on the system meets our requirements.
“We don’t want to stop containers at the wharf which will only hold up trade and increase the cost of our consumer goods in shops.
“In fact, we have a matrix which we use to target containers; if a container falls within this variable, then it will be of interest to Customs – mostly based on the commodity code, valuation, port of origin and importer.
“We facilitate trade as much as possible, but using the risk based method where we target the high-risk ones only; this means that 90 out of a 100 goods on shop shelves have passed through without our intervention so the prices should not be affected by us.”
Towe said post-Coronavirus, Customs had to step up its effort to ensure an investor friendly environment “where we facilitate legitimate legal trade and at the same time, control the illegal trade so investors can have confidence in our systems and procedures.”
“This level of confidence is critical so investors can choose PNG and be assured they make a return on their investment,” he said.