The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has simplified the requirements for wood export clearance (WEC) issuance and improved the application procedure and lengthened the number of days before the actual loading, as it improves export policy.
Luimyla Valente-Peña, senior forest management specialist at DENR Forest Management Bureau, said airway bill and bill of lading are just the commercial documents required.
“There are no additional requirements needed (for WEC issuance) and the normal commercial documents that we usually present,” she said during the recent Usapang Exports organized by the Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau.
Valente-Peña said the DENR also improved the application procedure and lengthened the number of days from five days before the actual loading.
“Now, it has been lengthened to 20 working days before filing a wood export clearance application,” she added.
Valente-Peña added the issuance of an export compliance certificate of the DENR field office has been removed, and instead a certificate of shipment or non-shipment shall be provided.
“This certificate of shipment or nonshipment confirms that the product has been loaded and the ship or plane that will transport, export the product, has left,” she said.
Valente-Peña said the department has also adopted the coding reflected in the 2022 ASEAN Harmonized Tariff Nomenclature (AHTN) that properly classifies the wood products for export.
She said 2022 AHTN can be downloaded at the Tariff Commission website where the codes and tariff rates per commodity can be found.
Valente-Peña said it has also qualified the non-commercial goods from commercial quantity and exempted the non-commercial goods from the regulation of the DENR and semi and finished wood products covered in DENR Administrative Order (DAO) 1991-54.
DAO 1991-54 pertains to rules and regulations governing the exportation of finished and semi-finished wood products.
“If you export for non-commercial, personal (use), say one piece, two pieces of wooden products, we will no longer include this in the regulation of the DENR,” she added.
Valente-Peña also emphasized wood species covered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora should secure a separate certification from the Biodiversity Management Bureau prior to the WEC application.
“We already changed the export authority to wood export clearance to be clearer and become a standard across other government agencies so they use export clearance. We just added wood in the term,” she said. – Press release
