DA, NFA involved in all rice rackets

No more questions about it. Davidson Bangayan is the alias David Tan, the alleged Goliath of rice smuggling. He himself swore so, in a court affidavit that was presented to the Senate hearing last Wednesday.

During the televised event, Justice Sec. Leila de Lima and the diligent among the senators swapped bits of their respective researches. From the revelations, it would seem that the Dept. of Agriculture and the National Food Authority are into every racket involving rice. The very officials tasked to boost harvests and stabilize retail rates are profiteering from it — to the loss of farmers and consumers.

Start with the DA-NFA’s farmers-as-importers scheme, by which Bangayan used farm cooperatives as fronts to import rice. He claimed it wasn’t smuggling but “consolidating”; that is, he financed cash-starved co-ops. They wouldn’t have qualified for the DA-NFA special import permits. For, it costs about P7.5 billion to bring in the 300,000 tons of rice that the DA-NFA was allocating to them (one-third to one-half of the government’s yearly imports in 2011-2013). But quoting whistleblowers, de Lima said Bangayan filled out all the co-ops’ import-quota bidding forms and prices, for submission to the DA-NFA. It doesn’t matter that he paid the co-op officers P20 per sack upon bagging a 10,000-ton chunk of the quota. The point, from de Lima’s narrative, is that he rigged the DA-NFA biddings.

The rigging was pulled off because of colluding DA-NFA insiders (which this column repeatedly has been exposing for a decade). The crooks concocted the import scheme under the past administration, purportedly so that farmers could earn from importing what they lost from unprofitable planting. Knowing, however, that the farmers had no capital to import, they pointed them to cohort-financiers. The present admin continued the racket.

There were times when Bangayan directly engaged in smuggling, de Lima said. He allegedly brought in, undeclared, double the rice volume stated in the DA-NFA import quota, or reused expired permits. This was done in cahoots with Customs crooks; a retired agency bigwig says Bangayan, aka Tan, had bribed ports inspectors P6 billion in ten years. DA-NFA men were involved too. They deliberately were loose in monitoring the compliance with quotas, and in retrieving used permits.

Mentioned only in passing in the hearing was the DA-NFA’s modification of the import scheme in 2013. It issued only a few thousand tons of permits to co-ops, and directly imported 205,700 tons in the first semester, 500,000 in the second. That enabled the crooks to import from Vietnam at $459.75 per ton, when the going rate was $360-$365. The overprice of $100, or P4,500, per ton totaled more than P3.2 billion. The modification was billed as government-to-government, to mask the scam. Yet Vietnamese agriculture officials know the “kalakaran (kickbacks)” when dealing with Filipino counterparts. A private facilitator named Buddy R. negotiations between the two sets of supposed experts in rice trading and shipping. (See Gotcha, 17 and 20 Jan. 2013.) The DA-NFA deputized the Customs bureau to enforce its monopolized racket.

Today thus, no one but the DA-NFA may import rice. That’s why the Customs confiscated nearly a million tons of rice brought into the ports of Subic, Batangas, Legaspi, Cebu, and Davao cities in early 2013. Officials said during the hearing that court orders to return the seized contraband to the shippers were stymieing their anti-smuggling efforts.

It must be noted, though, that only two of the many seizures — one in Batangas, another in Davao — are the subject of court injunctions. The rest of the shipments had — or should have — been auctioned off. Meaning, about 500,000 tons of rice from abroad could or should have flooded the local market in 2013.

Yet, right after the supposed bumper harvest of March-May 2013, the retail price of NFA rice shot up by P8 to P28 a kilo, and has since further surged to P33 today. Poor consumers can hardly afford that rate. In monopolizing the import of 705,700 tons of rice last year, the DA-NFA shut out private importers who were willing to pay 50-percent tariff. The government thus was deprived of some P6.5 billion in revenues, while having to spend P13 billion to import. That money could have been better used to improve irrigation, farm productivity, and post-harvest facilities for farmers — while keeping retail prices down for consumers.

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You’ve seen most everything onstage: comedy, romance, action, drama, musicale. Now try a suspense-thriller, “Wait Until Dark,” the Repertory Philippines’ 2014 opener.

The Broadway hit was first staged in 1996. A blind housewife gets caught in three conmen’s murderous search for a heroin — hidden inside a doll that mistakenly was delivered to her flat. The trio tries to coax her, via a convoluted whodunit, into handing it over. Tension rises as she senses their ploy, so counterplots to foil them. And she needs to do it ... in the dark.

Liesl Batucan’s gripping portrayal makes the audience sit on edge. Also starring Arnel Carrion, Joel Trinidad, Robbie Guevara, Daniella Gana, and Lorenz Martinez. Directed by Miguel Faustmann.

Performances at Onstage, Greenbelt-1, Makati, Fridays to Sundays up to Feb. 9. Matinee and regular tickets available at the box office, or call (02) 5716926, or e-mail [email protected].

Season tickets, as low as P480 per Orchestra-Center, include four other plays till yearend: “August: Osage County,” “Noises Off,” “Pinocchio,” and “Scrooge”.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

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