MANILA – The Bureau of Customs said it is starting to make public all its available data to ensure transparency in its transactions, Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said.
He said the Bureau of Customs is part of the government’s Open Data task force and has started publishing new data for greater transparency. “The one thrust of Commissioner John Sevilla is to open up all the data in the website, sa dashboard ng data.gov.ph at saka may sarili silang portal, ilalabas doon ang mga presyo, ang mga duties, kung sino ang nag-i-import. All these for the purpose of the public to verify kung ‘yung mga Customs duties na binabayaran, for instance, specific consignees are correct,” Lacierda said.
During the launching of the Good Governance Summit in January, when the Open Data was also launched, Sevilla invited everyone to look into the BOC’s data and the bureau got good reception from the public, according to Lacierda.
He said the new BOC thrust made a basis for everyone who’s interested on Customs data to visit either the Customs website or go to the Customs dashboard of data.gov.ph, adding the idea is to open to the public data and information to ensure transparency.
“We follow the sunlight principle, ‘pag naarawan ‘yan, mas mabuti sa atin. So lahat ‘yan may plano ang Bureau of Customs na ilabas ang mga datos na hindi naman confidential ang nature. So ilalabas ‘yan for everyone to see kung tama ba ang binabayad ng mga consignees,” he said.
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