The cur­rent chaos be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by busi­ness­es with the new pay­ment sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed by Cus­toms and Ex­cise at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port bond is a re­sult of the body en­forc­ing a 2011 law brought about by for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions by Ma­yaro Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rush­ton Paray about the pub­lic out­cry from the busi­ness sec­tor re­gard­ing the in­abil­i­ty of Cus­toms and Ex­cise to prop­er­ly man­age the “bond­ing” of all pack­ages in the Ex­press Lo­gis­tics sec­tor. Paray asked Im­bert if he could state whether he will re­con­sid­er this in­struc­tion un­til the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion is prop­er­ly re­sourced to do so.

But Im­bert said Paray’s ques­tion was based on the false premise that Cus­toms and Ex­cise was act­ing on gov­ern­men­tal in­struc­tions.

“There was no in­struc­tion by the Gov­ern­ment to do this, I just want to make that crys­tal clear. The Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance did not in­struct Cus­toms to do any­thing with re­spect to what is known as Ex­press Lo­gis­tics con­sign­ments,” Im­bert said.

“Ap­par­ent­ly, in 2010/2011 bud­get state­ment, the then min­is­ter of fi­nance, Mr Dook­er­an, had made a state­ment in the bud­get state­ment that goods, con­sign­ments of un­der $20,000 would not re­quire a for­mal cus­toms en­try. In that state­ment, he al­so said that this does not re­quire an amend­ment to the Cus­toms Act.

“It ap­pears, based on pre­lim­i­nary re­search, that that is not cor­rect. It does ap­pear that it does re­quire an amend­ment to the Cus­toms Act. That amend­ment was nev­er made.”

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, Cus­toms has just now de­cid­ed to en­force the law.

“The law re­quires both an en­try and a de­c­la­ra­tion,” Im­bert said.

How­ev­er, the new pol­i­cy has re­sult­ed in lengthy de­lays at the bond and prompt­ed sev­er­al busi­ness bod­ies and com­pa­nies to call on the Gov­ern­ment to re­scind the pol­i­cy dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert said the mat­ter on­ly be­came a pub­licly con­tro­ver­sial one on Thurs­day when those sev­er­al busi­ness cham­bers joint­ly re­vealed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the change.

“Pri­or to that, there was no di­rect in­ter­ven­tion or no di­rect en­treaty to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. There were dis­cus­sions, ap­par­ent­ly, at a low­er lev­el be­tween busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions and Cus­toms,” he said.

Im­bert al­so said that pri­or to Dook­er­an’s rule change in 2011, the val­ue thresh­old for small con­sign­ments that do not re­quire en­try was $1,000. Dook­er­an changed that to $20,000.

“It was strange­ly and mys­te­ri­ous­ly moved from $1000 to $20,000 just so. There was no sci­ence be­hind it,” he said.

Im­bert said that to by­pass the new rules, some com­pa­nies would bring in sev­er­al ship­ments, all un­der $20,000.

“There were ten ship­ments, 20 ship­ments all val­ued at $19,500,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said that with ex­press con­sign­ments, the couri­er ser­vices are now re­quired to pre­pare an en­try which they were not do­ing be­fore and that is where the prob­lem arose.

“I have asked the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to ex­plain to me ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing, what was done over the past ten years or so, what are the con­se­quences and im­pli­ca­tions of what they are do­ing,” he said.

“We are look­ing at it from both sides. One side, the ease of do­ing busi­ness, the oth­er side we would want to avoid leak­age of rev­enue and im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal items.”

Im­bert said that more prob­lems arise when there is no Cus­toms en­try form.

“You have to un­der­stand that if there is no Cus­toms en­try then the in­for­ma­tion is not be­ing put in­to the com­put­erised sys­tem, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for Cus­toms to do ran­dom checks, and to check the man­i­festo to see ex­act­ly what the items are.”

De­spite the stag­na­tion at Cus­toms and Ex­cise due to the new pol­i­cy, Im­bert said he would not be re­act­ing in a “knee-jerk” man­ner to the is­sue.

“We need to be care­ful and not have a knee-jerk re­ac­tion and just jump in­to it,” he said.

He promised to have a re­sponse by the end of next week af­ter he met with the rel­e­vant bod­ies and gath­ered the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion.

On Thurs­day, sev­er­al lo­cal busi­ness cham­bers, couri­er com­pa­nies and busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly re­scind the changes. The amal­ga­mat­ed group claimed that the de­lays meant that some busi­ness­es were los­ing as much as US$50,000 a day.