The director of the Customs Agency (DGA), Enrique Ramírez Paniagua, favors changes to Customs Law 3489 that dates back to 1953. He highlighted earlier efforts at the Customs Agency to update rules and regulations were filed away by his predecessor who believed that the current customs law was working and didn’t need fixing.
Speaking at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Ramírez said that the new times call for the drafting of a new Customs Bill that would increase juridical security for commerce stakeholders. He said an industry commission is working on updating the law with the participation of public and private entities.
Ramírez said that in 2016 only one sector, that of free zone exporters, accounted for US$10 billion in goods shipped by airports and land ports between imports and exports.
During the talk he made it clear that the DGA would not cause obstruction or uncertainty to the export sector. On the contrary, he said the role of the DGA was to facilitate trade and reiterated that his agency is a strategic ally that facilitates economic growth and guides the business sector.
Speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce audience, Ramírez highlighted that the Dominican Republic is the first country in the Western Hemisphere to allow for a 24 hour customs clearance in normal conditions, while most goods clear customs in an average maximum of 48 hours, as established by the DR-CAFTA.
He mentioned as accomplishments of the DGA, the operation of the Single-Stop Foreign Trade Window (VUCE), the Authorized Economic Operator (OEA) provision, and the notification of measures in Category A of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement.
Ramírez also expressed his support to public-private actions to turn the country into the Logistics Hub of the Caribbean.
In his talk, he highlighted the importance of the free zone export free zone industries that employ 163,000 in direct jobs and another 300,000 in indirect jobs nationwide.
He said the DGA would continue to fight contraband. He reported that in the past five months the agency had seized and incinerated 12 freight containers with more than 80 million cigarette units, the largest operation since these were started in 2014. He said since he was appointed in 2016, munitions, firearms of all calibers, machines to manufacture munitions and non-declared cash has been seized at unprecedented amounts. In addition, Ramirez said they have seized more than 310,000 articles in contraband.
Read more in Spanish:
Listin Diario
El Caribe
27 January 2017
