SASO foils attempts to sell smuggled sugar

MANILA, Philippines - The Sugar Anti-Smuggling Organization (SASO) recently stopped multiple attempts to sell smuggled sugar into the open market.

SASO head Joel Goltiao said they received reports that middlemen in Davao were offering traders 100,000 bags of imported Thai sugar allegedly without approval from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) and Bureau of Customs (BOC).

In Subic, BOC officials recorded an aborted smuggling attempt when middlemen linked to the same group in Davao inquired about bringing their imported sugar to local markets without an SRA clearance.

The same modus operandi was reported in Tarlac and Pampanga, involving 400,000 bags of illegal sugar kept in private warehouses.

Through joint operations of SASO and BOC, the sale of these undocumented sugar products into the market was prevented, giving middlemen a hard time finding buyers for their illegal sugar.

SASO has been vigilantly monitoring activities in the ports of Manila, Batangas, Cebu, Subic, Clark, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and General Santos.

Incidents of undocumented sugar being found in these areas have dramatically dropped since SASO launched its anti-smuggling drive last year.

Goltiao said sugar smuggling has been hurting the industry for so long, adversely affecting thousands of small sugarcane farmers.

An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 metric tons of sugar are smuggled into the country annually, translating into billions of pesos of lost revenue for the government.

SASO’s crackdown on sugar smugglers included a series of raids in 2010, where illegal sugar was seized from warehouses in Cebu City through joint operations with the Philippine National Police, SRA, and the BOC.

The SASO is the anti-smuggling arm created and funded by the sugar industry to fight sugar smuggling. It operates under the Sugar Master Plan Foundation Inc.