THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) on Thursday padlocked 11 warehouses in Guiguinto, Bulacan, for various tax violations, including non-registration and failure to pay the annual registration fee. Authorities, meanwhile, are also checking if the rice was smuggled into the country.
The raiding team led by officials of the Department of Finance (DOF) and BIR said that the stalls were illegally operated by five companies that stored at least 410,000 sacks of importedrice from Vietnam and Myanmar.
“After the closure, we will do an inventory, we will document them for us to determine if these are considered smuggled rice,” Revenue Deputy Commissioner for Operations Arnel Guballa said.
The establishments owned by Cagayan Corn Products Corp., Pacific Rim Transport and Logistics Inc., UPFC Logistics Corp., AAI Logistics Cargo Express Inc., and JCOMP Trading and Distribution have been under the tax agency’s watch since March.
Aside from imported rice, the raiding team also discovered five warehouses containing corn flour, imported soy milk, and liquid detergent products.
The revenue-collecting agency has yet to determine the worth of all the goods, pending an inventory that was ongoing as of press time.
“We have been monitoring these businesses since March and in a span of seven months, we discovered sacks of rice, corn flour, and milk; they are registered in BIR as a ‘logistics and tracking’ company,” Guballa explained.
DOF Assistant Secretary Tony Lambino warned that the tax-delinquent establishments in Bulacan may endanger consumers’ health if the rice imports are proven to be smuggled. “If these rice are smuggled, we are endangering the health of our consumers—these sacks of rice may have skipped the sanitary measures [that are conducted] if you legally import food,” Lambino said.
The warehouses will remain closed until all tax deficiencies have been settled.
Image credits: Bernard Testa