THE enactment of a bill declaring smuggling of agricultural products as economic sabotage will send the signal that the government is bent on curbing smuggling in the country, Sen. Cynthia Villar said on Monday.
“We want smugglers to feel the gravity of their act by making agricultural smuggling a nonbailable offense. The presence of smuggled agricultural products unjustly lowers market price, making it almost impossible for locally produced goods to compete,” Villar said.
She said the report of the Committee on Agriculture and Food on the bill is now being routed for signature of senators, and will be sponsored on the Senate floor this week.
Under the bill, the amount of smuggled agricultural product subject to economic sabotage is equal to or more than P10 million for rice; and equal to or more than P1 million for other agricultural products, such as sugar, corn, pork, poultry, garlic, onion, carrots, dried fish and cruciferous vegetables.
“Smuggling of agricultural products put our local industries and food producers in a very dangerous and vulnerable situation,” she said.
Villar also lamented the pace in prosecuting smugglers. Until now, she said the Department of Justice has not filed formal charges against alleged big-time smuggler David Bangayan and Leah Cruz, who were involved in the garlic cartel. They were the center of the inquiry on smuggling in 2013 presided by Villar.
“In order to ensure food security and stability, higher sanctions for certain acts of agricultural smuggling, tantamount to economic sabotage, must be imposed. Harsher punishments to smugglers, traders and government officers, if enacted, will curtail such acts, which compromise the level of food security in the country,” she said.
She said smuggling is more serious than the pork-barrel scam, with about 600,000 metric tons of rice smuggled each year and about P200 billion lost to agricultural smuggling alone. Villar said she also continues to receive reports that the onion and garlic cartel is still operating in Nueva Ecija and Ilocos Norte.