Quick Read
- Customs Local Affairs Office places the records and standards for partnerships with local governments, agencies and business groups in one office under the Commissioner.
- Collection districts and functional offices lose the discretion to run those partnerships on their own.
- Top importers and accredited groups now deal with two offices on joint programs, and both sit under the Commissioner.
- Partners carry the reversal risk, because the office is ad hoc and a later memorandum can resize or fold it.
- The bureau has already reported that outsiders solicit money for special treatment, and a single central door raises the value of that claim.
The Bureau of Customs has moved control of its outside partnerships to the top. Through Customs Memorandum Order No. 17-2026, Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno created the Customs Local Affairs Office within the Office of the Commissioner. The Customs Local Affairs Office becomes the bureau’s central office for partnerships with local governments, national agencies, business organizations and industry associations.
Partnership Authority Now Sits With the Commissioner
The order’s functions are specific. The office coordinates and oversees programs involving local government units, national agencies and other domestic partners. It sets policies and standards for how those engagements run, and it keeps a central repository of agreements and understandings. A director leads it, and it works directly with deputy commissioners, collection districts and functional groups.
It is also the latest of several offices placed under the Commissioner. The bureau’s 2026 issuance list shows earlier orders creating a Strategic Advisory Office, a Top Importers Office, a Project Management Office, an office for Balikbayan and OFW concerns and an International Affairs Office under the same office. The pattern points to concentration around the Commissioner. That is an interpretation of the list, not a stated policy.
Read structurally, a bureau with many ports carried its outside relationships in many places. Now one office records them and sets the standards. Whoever runs a relationship at a port may keep running it, but the record and the rules sit at the center.
The Customs Local Affairs Office Replaces Port Officials’ Discretion
Collection districts and functional offices lose the most. An office that sets standards and holds the central list of partnerships decides which arrangements count as formal. What the ports lose, the Commissioner’s office gains: one view of every partnership and the standard each one is judged against. Local governments and national agencies gain a named counterpart at the center and stop negotiating port by port.
Published reports do not say whether existing agreements must be registered or when the order takes effect. Those answers decide how much the Customs Local Affairs Office changes in practice. If existing agreements must be logged, any local understanding never recorded centrally becomes undocumented by comparison. If they need not be, the office mostly shapes new partnerships.
Top Importers Now Sit Under Two Offices
The Top Importers Office was created this year under the same Commissioner’s office, for top importers and third parties. The order directs the new office to coordinate with it when a partnership involves top importers or accredited groups. Two offices now see those initiatives where one saw them before, and both report to the Commissioner.
Large importers running joint programs with the bureau gain a formal channel and lose the option of a quiet one once the Customs Local Affairs Office keeps the record. The cost lands on importers whose arrangements ran through a single port, since an understanding with one collector now has to fit a standard written at the center. That reading follows from the coordination duty and is not a reported effect.
An Ad Hoc Office Can Be Reshaped by Memorandum
Published reports describe the unit as ad hoc. Because a memorandum order created it, a later memorandum can resize it, move it or fold it into another office. Partners that rebuild their dealings with the BOC around the Customs Local Affairs Office are betting that it outlasts the person who created it. Local governments and industry associations carry that bet most directly, because their formal channel lasts only as long as the order does.
The same list shows how quickly these offices change. CMO No. 15-2026 amended CMO No. 13-2026 and renamed the Balikbayan and OFW Action Center. CMO No. 16-2026 renamed and reorganized the External Affairs Office when it created the International Affairs Office. Offices built by memorandum are being rebuilt by memorandum within months.
A Single Access Point Raises the Price of Counterfeit Access
The bureau has itself reported that outsiders solicit money for special treatment. In August 2025 it warned the public of people impersonating Nepomuceno and other officials, and of a scheme called Enrollment that claimed to give preferential treatment to importers and brokers who pay. The bureau said the scheme is not a BOC program. Nepomuceno denied any involvement and said the bureau will not tolerate extortion, bribery or solicitation in exchange for special favors. The bureau opened an investigation.
The older record on payoffs is contested. At a House hearing in August 2017, customs broker Mark Taguba alleged that brokers paid as much as ₱34,500 per container to customs personnel to speed processing. The officials he named denied it. He later withdrew his claim that personnel collected on behalf of senior officials, saying he had only meant to identify the offices that received the money. Separately, valuation discretion at the Import Assessment Service has been raised as a point of vulnerability, because assessed values can differ from declared values even when bank transfers support the declared figure.
Nothing here shows that the Customs Local Affairs Office is or will become a channel for payments. When partnership access runs through one office, a person who claims to control that door holds a more valuable claim, and partners have fewer independent ways to check it.
Control of the bureau’s outside relationships now sits in the Customs Local Affairs Office, the sixth office placed under the Commissioner this year. Port officials have lost discretion. Partners depend on a channel that lasts only as long as the order does, and anyone selling false access has one door to claim.
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