END AGRICULTURAL SMUGGLING

By: Yogi Filemon Ruiz

Agricultural smuggling also reduces the farmers’ production output and messes up the prices of our local products resulting in lesser income for farmers.

From all walks of life, every Filipino prepares big time for the Media Noche.

There’s the traditional ham festively surrounded by pineapple rings and bright red cherries, bowls of Russian salad garnished with potato wedges, carrots, onions, and sugar beets, aside from grazing boards loaded with all kinds of cheese — Camembert, Brie, Gruyere, Cheddar.

Ever-present are fruit baskets brimming with oranges, apples, pears, and lychees or every round fruit one can get their hands on, believed to bring good luck and fortune in time for the New Year.

Whether bought from air-conditioned supermarkets or the exotic markets of Divisoria or Quiapo, chances are some of these imported holiday yummies entered the country without the necessary permits or were processed using fraudulent documents with items either misclassified or misdeclared.

While indulging in such gustatory pleasures, how often do many pause in the middle of their sumptuous repast to think about the implications of patronizing food or goods in general — that came into our ports — and by extension, into our households, through the back door?

The question is most relevant today, especially when we hear or read the news daily about the astonishing and seemingly absurd rise in the prices of essential commodities like rice, sugar, vegetables, meat, poultry, and fruits. Harried housewives and cooks perform a nearly impossible balancing act, literally and figuratively. The threat of more smuggled agricultural food products flooding the market appears unabated.

What are the implications if we allow this practice of agricultural smuggling — long established and enough to make it look like it is standard practice or an accepted norm that we have learned to tolerate — to persist?

For one, it means a huge loss in government revenues that could have been used to finance more roads, bridges, or schools or to help farmers reel from age-old problems like the high cost of feed or fertilizer, transporting their produce to the markets, and having access to much-needed loans.

Agricultural smuggling also reduces the farmers’ production output and messes up the prices of our local products resulting in lesser income for farmers.

An even more dangerous but often overlooked outcome is that the entry of these illegal farm products can pose a risk to public health and safety through pests and harmful chemicals sprayed on the same to ensure longer shelf life.

In 2016, two laws were passed to contain the spread of this pernicious practice of agricultural smuggling. Republic Act 10845, or the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act, aims principally to protect farmers from unscrupulous businessmen and importers by declaring such large-scale undertakings of the latter as acts of economic sabotage. Soon afterward, RA 10863, or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, was signed into law amending previous customs procedures and policies to strengthen measures further curbing opportunities for corruption at the Bureau of Customs, as one of the agencies mandated to lead in the effort.

A total of 107 seizures of agricultural products have been conducted since January 2022, with an estimated value of P1.226 billion. The top products were sugar (P313 million), poultry/chicken (P260 million), and onions (P191 million). We have already filed cases in court against several unscrupulous smugglers and won some of them.

But this is not just a BoC affair. Regular consultation meetings with other government agencies are being conducted under a whole-of-government approach that we have been implementing to address the problem of agricultural smuggling since I assumed the Commissioner post in July this year. In the coming months, especially in the first quarter of 2023, you will see the progress of this collaboration which hopefully will be felt by our farmers and will redound to the protection of our local produce.

In the case of seized agricultural products, we are open to donating them to Kadiwa stores to benefit the poor and to other government agencies involved in relief operations subject to regulatory inspections.

If the concerned regulatory agencies can attest that these products are fit for human consumption, we will be happy to turn them over. However, there are specific processes that we have to follow and involve other government bodies in quick decision-making since most of these are perishable goods.

However, much remains to be done. Running after smugglers is a continuing fight, a mission to give them sleepless nights so they will not enjoy the fruits of their greed and pretension.

Should we care?

As good citizens, it’s about time we do — if we truly love our country.

The onset of a new year is the best occasion signaling new beginnings, change, and as fresh as any to do what is right.

As an act of civic responsibility, one can break ground with a simple New Year’s resolution: Do not buy smuggled goods, go local.