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MOBILE-PHONE industry players are bucking a plan to
require dealers and suppliers to pay a fee before selling units,
adding this is a form of taxation.
“The requirement for existing
mobile-phone owners to pay a sticker fee before offering it for sale
bespeaks of a tax or imposition that violates the contractual rights
of an individual, and being a form of tax, we subscribe that only
Congress has the power to validly pass such regulation,” Smart
Communications Inc. said in a position paper submitted to the
National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
The NTC is finalizing a circular
requiring suppliers, dealers and subscribers to place a sticker
provided by the regulator on mobile phones put on sale to protect
the buying public.
The NTC circular imposes a
one-time registration fee of P75 for each mobile phone regardless of
make or model.
“The NTC by imposing the P75
registration/sticker fee would constitute a form of a
‘registration tax’ that is imposed before any sale or transfer
of a mobile phone takes place,” Smart said.
It argued that if NTC refused to
withdraw this proposed sticker requirement, it will have effectively
imposed a “tax” for revenue generating purposes, in “direct
contravention of its authority merely to impose reasonable
supervision and regulatory fees.”
“The draft [circular] is a
consumer burden, a rehash or duplication of existing [circulars] and
the new ‘fee’ it charges constitutes a tax which deprives a
valid owner the freedom to contract and dispose a personal
property,” Smart said.
In a separate position paper,
William S. Pamintuan, senior vice president for legal services at
Sun Cellular, said the one time registration fee is prohibitive for
the consumer in the long run since this will be passed on by the
re-seller.
Separately, Francisco Dennis
Manzano, Sony Ericsson general manager, said the NTC’s phone
sticker will delay the deployment of shipments in view of the
requirement to put stickers before release at the Bureau of Custom.
“Currently the ‘gray’
units’ time to market is faster than the legitimate imports. With
the new requirement and the initial rollout, we foresee a longer
time to market. The price gap between legitimate and gray imports
sill further widen in view of the additional cost of the NTC sticker
at P75, plus manpower costs in implementing the same. This will make
legitimate products less competitive in the market,” he said.
Manzano added that under
Memorandum Circular 02-01-2001, all handset suppliers and
distributors pay tamper proof labels at P5 and bluetooth
registration at P100 per handset.
“The cumulative cost of the new
sticker and the existing registration fees is already exorbitant,”
he said.
 --Darwin
G. Amojelar
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