To stop rampant rice smuggling in the country, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) will come out with a checklist to help law enforcement units like the police and the military to properly inspect rice shipments arriving in the country and identify whether these are legitimate or not.
“As the police and the military are very instrumental in our fight against illegal rice smuggling, we want to provide them with the proper knowledge that can help them in their anti-smuggling campaign especially with the spate of rice smuggling in far-flung areas,” Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla said in a statement.
“This information drive will certainly boost their ability to detect and identify documents needed to constitute a legitimate rice importation,” Sevilla added.
“With the cooperation of the military and the police and with our aggressive stance against illegal smuggling, we can put a stop to this,” Sevilla stated.
“Just imagine the taxes lost because of rice smuggling, plus its impact on the livelihood of local farmers who cannot compete with the low prices of smuggled rice,” he noted.
According to the commissioner, the checklist will include a list of documents needed for rice importation that authorities should look for when inspecting rice shipments, like the bill of lading (B/L), commercial invoice, as well as BOC and National Food Authority (NFA) import permits.
Once the checklist is ready, Sevilla said it will be distributed to their law enforcement counterparts.
Presidential Decree No. 4 and Republic Act No. 7178, or the Agricultural Tariffication Act, mandates that only the NFA can import rice and that private entities must secure a permit from the agency to be able to do the same.
Just recently, the BOC seized P200 million worth of smuggled rice from Vietnam at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Cagayan De Oro.
The seized rice shipment, consigned to EC Peninzula and New Dawn Enterprises, were inside 100 container vans, of which 20 container vans had been placed under alert order by the BOC’s Intelligence Group based on derogatory information.
Upon inspection, Customs officials discovered that the shipment contained glutinous rice from Vietnam instead of tiles and stoneware declared in the B/L.
The consignees will be charged in court for violating Section 2503 of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines. – Roumina Pablo
