'Large-scale smuggling stalling rice sufficiency goal'

MANILA, Philippines – Lawmakers warned yesterday that unabated large-scale rice smuggling is jeopardizing the government’s rice self-sufficiency program for the next two years.

Batangas Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza, chairman of the House committee on agriculture and food; Butil party-list Rep. Agapito Guanlao, chairman of the House committee on food security; and Abono party-list Rep. Robert Raymund Estrella earlier filed joint House Resolution 2658 urging a full-blown investigation into the unabated rice smuggling that they said threatens the country’s food security and jeopardizes the income of local rice farmers.

Mendoza said about ninety 20-footer container vans loaded with Mango brand premium white rice from Vietnam was seized last July 24 and 420,000 bags weighing 21,000 metric tons of Indian white rice last May 15 from India was apprehended by Bureau of Customs (BOC) officials in Subic, Zambales.

“If not through the strong efforts of the BOC, this illegally imported rice would have surely been supplied in our local markets, adversely affecting local rice farmers,” he said.

Mendoza said it is time to heighten efforts to check and penalize rice smugglers to protect and strengthen the rice sector of the agriculture industry.

He said the illegally imported rice consigned to Oriental Tradelink Express, Inc. and Masagana Import Export Inc. came from Vietnam and was declared as construction materials and supplies and gypsum board.

“The rice shipment imported from India was consigned to Metroeastern Trading Corp. and docked at the Port of Subic on April 4, 2012 purportedly for storage purposes only as declared by the shipment’s claimant-intervenor, Amira C Foods International,” the lawmaker said.

Guanlao said the flooding of illegally imported rice in the local market results in price disparity, which is detrimental to locally produced rice.

Estrella said that the resulting oversupply gravely affects the livelihood of Filipino rice farmers because they are forced to sell their yields at a very low price.