Vans with rice from Vietnam held

CEBU, Philippines - About a hundred containers vans containing rice from Vietnam are still under guard by the Bureau of Customs-Port of Cebu after the importer failed to secure a certificate of turnover from the National Food Authority.

But yesterday BOC deputy collector for operations Francis Agustin Erpe said that certificate of turnover was already given and that the said rice shipment will be released anytime. There were suspicions that the said rice shipment was put on hold by the BOC as these were believed to be smuggled.

More so after it was confirmed that the BOC had no records of any pending importation entry of the said shipment, which prompted Customs collector Ronnie Silvestre to ask the Customs Law Division to initiate abandonment proceedings against the said shipment.

Erpe said that just yesterday, the consignee already secured all the necessary documents, thus it will no longer be subjected to abandonment proceedings.

Republic Act 7641 as implemented by CAO No. 5-93 and CMO 47-93 as amended by CMO 15-94 states that upon the failure of the owner, importer, consignee or interested party to file the necessary import entry for the shipment within a non-extendable period of 30 days from the date of discharge of the last package from the carrying vessel, aircraft, the shipment shall be considered abandoned and shall ipso facto to be deemed property of the government to be disposed in accordance with law. It was not clear as to when the said shipment arrived in the Port of Cebu.

Erpe explained that the container vans are part of the 1,992 container vans containing rice imported by the NFA and that an import entry for this shipment was already processed. Erpe said that NFA, under its Private Sector Finance Importation, has allowed the private sector to import rice. The container vans were intended for Visayas and Mindanao. For the 1,992 container vans of rice shipment, NFA awarded it to eight bidders through a proper bidding.

In a memorandum circular, the NFA said all rice-based farmers organizations, other sectors and even individuals to import rice but with certain limit and in a specific country. NFA-7 spokeswoman Lucy Rosales said that NFA, to date, has no more rice importation and that all the certificate of turnover were already issued to the winning bidders. (THE FREEMAN)