Farmers hail Biazon move to suspend rice auction

MANILA, Philippines - Rice farmers’ cooperatives hailed Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon’s move to order the suspension of an auction involving a shipment of 94,000 sacks of premium grade rice from Vietnam by the Legazpi Port district where only one firm was qualified to bid.

Farmers belonging to Green Valley United Cooperative, Samahan ng mga Kapampangan sa San Ildefonso Multipurpose Cooperative, and the Sili Multipurpose Cooperative, said Biazon should look deeper especially into the guidelines set by the Legaspi City port customs district for the pre-qualification of bidders that can participate. The guidelines resulted in only one bidder-trader getting qualified.

The four farmers’ cooperatives said the pre-qualification of only one bidder could result in a highly-disadvantageous deal for the government with no competition in the bidding.

It was learned that “new” guidelines were set particularly for the auction of the said 94,000 sacks of Vietnam rice, deviating from those set by Customs Administrative Order 10-2007, which laid down rules and regulations in the conduct of public auctions by the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

The farmers’ groups said the “new” guidelines required that bidders should have at least P880 million in gross sales as declared in their Bureau of Internal Revenues (BIR) Income Tax Return (ITR) for the proceeding fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012 and a requirement for all participating bidders to prove that they participated and won in one of the public biddings of rice duly conducted by the National Food Authority and the BOC by submitting the original or certified true copies of the NFA/BOC Notice of Award and Official Receipt (NOA/OR) of not less than P440 million.

The four cooperatives are contesting the BOC’s confiscation of the rice shipment from Vietnam, saying this was a legitimate rice importation arranged by them, sanctioned by an NFA quota allocation under the latter’s Private Sector-Financed (PSF) importation program.

The four cooperatives pointed out that the BOC Legaspi port Customs district was fast-tracking the auction of the shipment when the cases they have filed questioning the confiscation of the rice shipment have yet to be resolved with finality by the bureau and the courts.