The Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) has recommended the sale through public auction of a sunken cargo ship it seized seven years ago that has cost the agency millions of pesos to keep in good condition.
BOC said it has paid Radial Golden Marine Services P26.5 million so far to safeguard and maintain the sunken vessel that was captured in 2009 in Bataan for carrying smuggled unlicensed firearms worth about P25 million at that time.
In a memorandum to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon said the proposed public auction of M/V Captain Ufuk H8EH, a cargo ship of Panamanian registry, abides by the provisions of Republic Act No. 10863, or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA), which provides for three modes of disposing of goods seized by the bureau.
Under Section 1141 of the CMTA, forfeited goods for disposition may be donated to another government agency, declared for official use by the customs bureau with the approval of the DOF Secretary, or sold at public auction “within 30 days after a 10-day notice posted at a public place at the port where the goods are located and published electronically or in a newspaper of general circulation.”
Faeldon’s memo also cites special provisions in the 2016 General Appropriations Act (GAA) which states that motor transport equipment and other articles forfeited or abandoned in favor of the government shall be sold at a public auction by the DOF upon recommendation of the BOC commissioner.
BOC deputy commissioner for revenue collection monitoring Arturo Lachica has recommended to Faeldon the disposal of the sunken vessel through a negotiated sale “at the soonest possible time.”
Lachica, who chairs BOC’s negotiated sale committee, pointed out that under their special crewing contract, the bureau “has been paying and continues to pay Radial Golden Marine Services a monthly fee of P331,500 for the vessel’s safeguarding and maintenance.”
To date, Lachica said, BOC has paid Radial Golden Marine a total of of P26.520 million for its services.
The proposed public auction of the M/V Captain Ufuk is the latest in a series of BOC attempts to relinquish control of the vessel seized by a BOC team led by lawyer Elvira Cruz in Mariveles, Bataan on August 20, 2009 after it was found loaded with five boxes containing 50 Pindad SS-1 rifles and other high-powered firearms worth about P25 million in total.
The ship, which has been docked at Manila Bay since its confiscation, sank on July 17, 2016 after water seeped through a hole on the ship.
From an initial floor price of P98.9 million when seized on August 20, 2009, the ship’s value has dropped by more than 400% to only P21.5 million as of 2015, according to a Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) estimate.
The Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) has pegged the vessel’s current price at $493,450, equivalent in pesos to roughly the same estimate made by the DBP.
The two estimates were done before the cargo ship sank earlier this month.
In his memo to Dominguez, Faeldon noted that public auction is among the modes enumerated by the Commission on Audit (COA) in Circular No 89-296 (s.1989) but a “sale through negotiation” may be resorted to for justifiable reasons.
“Considering the current state of the vessel, we recommend that the public auction be conducted anew pursuant to the provisions of the CMTA, GAA 2016, and COA Circular No. 89-296,” Faeldon said in his memo.
Several attempts in the previous years to bid out the vessel all failed.
Image courtesy of Naypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
