Sen. Cynthia Villar candidly admitted her exasperation in conducting legislative investigations on much reported rampant smuggling of onions, sugar, rice and other agricultural products. The feisty Senator did not mince words anew while presiding the Senate public hearing last Monday on the unexplained steep rise of price of onions amid so much smuggling of agricultural goods in our country.
The Senators blasted away the usual suspects in the smuggling trade: the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC). They were also at the receiving end of the rants by equally tart-tongued Sen.Raffy Tulfo who joined her and Senators Imee Marcos, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito.
The Senate committee on food and agriculture did not summon of course to the public hearing the head of the DA, a Cabinet post concurrently being held by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM). Before he flew to attend the World Economic Forum being held in Davos, Switzerland, PBBM publicly conceded smugglers have been getting away with their pernicious crime despite persistent attempts of the government even in the past to clamp down against them.
The Senators have to settle with senior DA Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban but who could not attend the Senate hearing. Panganiban sent instead one of PBBM’s DA deputies, undersecretary Mercedita Sombilla. Sen.Poe took the opportunity to call upon PBBM to appoint a “full-time” Agriculture Secretary.
Given the enormity of the food security problems that must be immediately addressed, there is rightfully an urgent need to place someone on the DA head office. For now, the buck stops at the desk of PBBM at Malacanang.
Senators instead trained their eyes to the non-attendance of Customs commissioner Yogi Felimon Ruiz who sent his underlings to face the Senate hearing.
Sen.Villar deplored both the DA and the BOC seemingly unable to stop smuggling syndicates operating under their very noses. “I told Sen. Imee, I really do not want to conduct anymore Senate investigation because of my extreme disappointment in any (Senate) investigation because nothing happens,” Sen.Villar decried.
The Senators’ frustrations were understandable given several remedial legislative measures passed into law by the previous Congresses. One of which is the law that declared large-scale agricultural smuggling as economic sabotage under Republic Act 10845 approved during the 16th Congress in May, 2016. Six years later, smuggled agricultural products are still hurting Filipino farmers whose counterparts from other countries enjoy State subsidies and other support from their respective governments.
Without a doubt, smugglers just went around these laws with impunity.
Aside from onions, Sen.Villar announced she would push hard for the passage into law of the proposed Livestock and Dairy Competitiveness Enhancement Fund “to help the victims of the shenanigans” of smugglers and their unscrupulous cohorts at the BOC. She revealed the hanky-panky of unscrupulous importers obviously in cahoots with corrupt BOC officials in passing off “good meat” as offals (liver, intestines and other animal organs as food ingredients). It is technical smuggling to avoid paying the higher tariff of 35%.
“Ano tingin nyo sa amin? Tatanga-tanga? Hindi kami tanga. Marunong naman kami kaya nga naging Senador kami,” she harangued the BOC and DA officials in attendance at her public hearing.
The proposed new law seeks to impose tariffs in all imported meat products and use its proceeds to finance the “ayuda” for the local livestock and dairy producers. Obviously, this will be patterned after the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), or Republic Act (RA) 11203 that took effect on March 5, 2019. The RTL replaced the quantitative restrictions (QR) or quota limits on imported rice, with tariffs of 35 to 40 percent and established the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) out of the tariff collections.
As mandated by the RTL, P10-billion annually out of total tariff collections from imported rice will be plowed back directly to benefit our country’s palay farmers up to year 2024. The RCEF mandated to be given out in the form of subsidies to finance programs for farm mechanization, procurement of high-quality seeds, access to credit and training to enhance the global competitiveness of Filipino farmers.
When our country signed and entered into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Jan.1995, its membership to the rules-based body would bring about economic benefits, primarily to the Philippine rural sector. Thus, the WTO required our country to commit to the tariffication of all products, except rice – being a staple food of Filipinos and certain industries classified as under the “infancy” period that need to mature first to become competitive in the globalized trading.
Fast forward. It’s the same story over and over again. In his address before our Tuesday Club breakfast gathering last week, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Felipe Medalla bewailed the WTO gave birth to “over-aged” but still inefficient industries. “Ang problema natin yung mga infant natin 90 years old na, infant pa rin,” Medalla pointed out.
An economist by profession, Medalla explained, there are two solutions to the smuggling problem, namely, impose quota or enforce higher tariff. But when the government decides how much to import by imposing QR, Medalla warned, the problem engenders another problem, that of monopoly.
It happens whenever the government is the one that distributes the quota. “Grabe ang temptation diyan – favoritism, selective granting, cartelization. Kasi madali na i-cartelize kasi ang nagco-conspire na lang lahat ng may import permit,” he noted.
Ideally, Medalla suggested, it is better to remove import permits and allow everyone to import subject to tariff payments. “Everything will be tariffied. The problem is people are terrified of (being) tariffied. So we must solve the terrified,” Medalla suggested.
This could probably level the playing field to our Filipino farmers.