MANILA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network): The proposed policy of the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) to impose new shipping fees has been deferred by the Department of Transportation (DOTr) following the objection of stakeholders and fears that these would only lead to higher costs of goods, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista (pic) told the Senate on Wednesday (April 12).
In his online appearance before the hearing of the Senate public services committee, Bautista disclosed that the PPA board decided to put on hold the implementation of the Trusted Operator Programme-Container Registry and Monitoring System (TOP-CRMS), which the PPA said was the solution to address the long-standing issue on the return of container deposits imposed by foreign shipping lines and to manage the backlog of foreign empty containers.
Various stakeholders and business groups, however, opposed the programme and called on President Marcos to intervene and immediately scrap TOP-CRMS, which they said “threatens to cripple the transport and logistics industries and the national economy as a whole.”
“[The project] was presented to the PPA board, and as of now, the decision is to defer it for the meantime that we are attending to the opposition; we will do another round of review for this,” he told the panel chaired by Sen. Grace Poe.
