THE biggest alliance of agricultural groups has expressed hope that the next Senate hearing on vegetable smuggling on Tuesday will divulge the four names submitted in confidence to Senate President Vicente Sotto III, and that Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar will “stop hiding” and attend hearings.
Rosendo So, president of the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag), said the four persons listed as having made separate calls to intervene to clear certain food importations should be named when the Committee of the Whole calls the next hearing.
So also said they hope “Secretary Dar will stop hiding and attend the hearing,” noting that the DA chief was unable to attend one hearing because he was in Dubai on official mission, and was in another conference in the regions when the next hearing was called.
According to So, the P8.5-billion estimated losses from farm products smuggling, as well as the continuing misery of farmers, warrant urgent and decisive action from DA as well as the Bureau of Customs.
So was pleased that DA Assistant Secretary Ferdinand Laciste had already furnished Sotto—who with Sen. Panfilo Lacson had pushed for a Committee of the Whole inquiry—with names of four powerful individuals who separately tried to intervene in behalf of importers.
However, So said these people should be named and given a chance to explain.
At the last hearing, senators had put the onus on the BOC and DA for the rampant smuggling, saying they cannot keep using the gaps in the law to justify minimal action against smuggling, because there are options available for them, like first-border inspection and existing food-safety laws, to plug the menace while Congress works on remedial legislation.
In a radio interview on Sunday, So aired suspicion that besides the four names on Laciste’s list, “there may be big people behind” the questionable importations, noting the deluge in smuggled items—“it’s not just onions, vegetables, but even rice,” So pointed out.
Right now, he said, local onion farmers are losing heavily, because the gateway price is only at P5-P8 a kilo. One hectare of onion farm requires P200,000 of inputs and other costs, so at P5-P8, a farmer can only derive some P40,000, or a huge income loss, he estimated.
Farmers, meanwhile, have been borrowing heavily to sustain costs of fertilizers, fuel, and, for the livestock producers, the costs of feeds that have also been rising.
The DA’s tendency to favor importations has deepened the local farmers’ misery, and the smuggling compounds their dire situation, he said.
He also pointed to the authorities’ continuing failure to make cold storage operators accountable, in light of continuing reports that the latter refuse access to inspectors, amid suspicion that they have shut their doors to local farmers on the pretext of being “full,” while allowing room for imported vegetables.
As a result, some local farmers make do with measures like putting their onions, for instance, beside electric fans. Onions need a certain cold temperature to keep, as the heat will force “pagsibol,” referring to the process when shoots and leaves start to appear, and the onions soon grow soft and unedible.
Besides smuggled onions and carrots—which Benguet farmers earlier said cost them P6 million losses daily —there persists smuggling of pechay and broccoli, according to So.
He reiterated the call for DA and BOC to conduct first-border inspection, which he said is important since it’s the DA that issues the import permits of SP-SIC.
Image credits: Bernard Testa