Philippines container sector triumphs over red tape, but its victory is but a skirmish against deadly foe
 Red tape in the maritime world is like the weather - everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything. Ceaseless talk often comes in the guise of doing something, but it invariably results in even more red tape.
Such remedial efforts always start with a study of the phenomenon itself, and the hiring of experts to determine which regulations are to be scrapped and the degree of risk of doing so.
But there has been a hopeful development in the Philippines. To protect the world from scary dreads of terrorism, unspecified opportunities for corruption, money laundering and other bureaucratic inconveniences, the Philippines Ports Authority demanded that foreign containers register with its Trusted Operator Programme-Container Registry and Monitoring System (TOP-CRMS), and obtain needed insurance.
This sparked protests from the Alliance of Concerned Truck Owners Organisations (ACTOO), the Association of International Shipping Lines (AISL) and Alliance of Container Yard Operators of the Philippines (ACYOP) to declare they had been subjected to a needlessly intrusive measure by the Philippines Ports Authority.
Appealing to the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA), set up in 2007 under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the agency also polices numberless small time bureaucratic fixers", who take "felicitation fees" to get things done expeditiously. In response, the port authority conducted an internal Regulation Impact Study (RIS) and found the burdens imposed on the industry were not as onerous as complaints suggested.
But Anti-Red Tape Authority differed after the ad hoc box operator coalition was joined by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and found that the port authority's self-serving impact study was based on questionable data and came to erroneous conclusions. So the Trusted Operator Programme-Container Registry and Monitoring System (TOP-CRMS) was withdrawn.
The problem here is that while this victory over red tape was heartening, it is also petty. What's more, because of the coalition of container operators, truckers, warehouse operators, shipping lines, yard operators, the story "had legs" and was covered in the Philippines press, with the good guys and he bad guys cast in the most obvious self-evident light. Most complaints of red tape live and die alone in obscurity.
But the TOP-CRMS scheme is not even the tip of the iceberg not in the Philippines and not in the world. Can anyone imagine how the 1760-1840 industrial revolution would get started in today's regulatory environment?
One recalls regulatory roadblocks stood in the way of when one local newspaper wanted to create what it called Suburban Weekend Television in the 1990s. There were any number blank cable television channels available.
The organiser was a powerful local weekly newspaper called The Suburban. It planned to broadcast Saturdays from 10am to 7pm programming with admittedly amateurish coverage of children's sporting events, amateur concerts, video vignette of stage productions, local town council meetings, panel discussions of public issues both foreign and domestic.
This was to be supported by advertising. A troupe of actors and copy-writing salesmen would go to the usual customers, selling clothing, rings and things advertising restaurants, whatever.
There was nothing on television on Saturdays to watch but sports. Thus, Suburban Weekend Television had a complete monopoly of the non-sport fan audience - overwhelmingly born-to-shop women. And on Sunday, the programming would be repeated for the sports fans. It was a win-win. Or so it appeared.
But what stopped the project dead in its tracks was the limitation on advertising. The only allowable commercial message was a simple card that could be displayed as a still for a fixed number of seconds.
When pressed, the regulator, the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission, gave as its reason that it would be unfair to broadcast licensees, who paid for their licences, to allow such a competitor to undermine the advertising revenue of broadcast licence holders.
Thus, to effect reform to minimised red tape, we are faced the endless tinkering with rules and regulations to remove the most onerous, with each being defended to the last ditch by those whose vested interests are protected by their existence - regardless of whether that protection is justified.
Or another approach to the red tape problem is advocated by Republican candidate for the US presidential nomination Vivek Ramaswamy. Rather than effect reform in detail, he suggests we take a wholesale approach. Instead of having battles over removing rules and regulation piecemeal, we get rid of them all department by department and debate which ones to restore.
Ramaswamy said he start eliminating the FBI. There was an America without an FBI and America thrived without one. He is also certain that the US would profit enormously by ridding itself of the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Department of Education doles out money to the teachers union's favoured political causes. Officially, the US Department of Education is the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for administrators and coordinates most federal assistance to education. Those functions, says Ramaswamy, are best left to the states and local government.
Ridding the bureaucracy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a way of cutting a Gordian Knot rather than trying to untangle it. Undoubtedly a new agency will have to rise in its place to license and regulate civilian use of nuclear energy to protect public health and safety, but this time with a view to facilitating nuclear energy rather than thwarting it.
The problem is - as it has been for decades - that the civil servants have become civil masters. There is hardly the slightest tone of subordinate deference to their political masters shown by department heads at Congressional and Parliamentary hearings. Increasingly, we see them trading on their own account enhancing themselves and their allies in other departments. They answer politicians' questions with the barest civility, and with hardly a thought of answering what is being asked.
It is good to remember this problem is not confined to the US, but extends to the western world. There is more than a little truth in that "Yes Minister" sub rosa quip that the civil service is the "opposition in residence". |
