13/09/2012 (Business Mirror) - Senate probers moved to expand their ongoing Senate inquiry into the P500-million rice-smuggling case at the Subic Freeport to include questionable importations of palm oil and other food products that threatens to put local industries out of business.

At the instance of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the Senate agriculture committee conducting the Subic rice-smuggling investigation--chaired by Sen. Francis Pangilinan--agreed to call further hearings with a view to crafting remedial legislation leading to a major overhaul of existing Bureau of Customs procedures.

“We are conducting this investigation to really find a remedy to the incidences of smuggling in our country,” Enrile told reporters after a hearing Wednesday. “There is smuggling in rice, meat, including palm oil now in our country which is killing the coconut industry and the national palm oil industry in the country.”

Saying a lot of money was being lost by the government, Enrile noted that smuggling has been “a continuing activity” and they have documents to prove it.

“These will be presented in due course so you can tell your people to be more watchful [to check rampant smuggling],”  the Senate president told Customs Chief Ruffy Biazon during the hearing. “It is affecting our coconut farmers, rice farmers, onion farmers and, so far, also our chicken farmers and the hog industry…we need to device a remedy in order to protect our people.”

 Pangilinan, the probe chairman, assured Enrile that the committee will pursue the matter further. “We support the manifestation of the Senate president. Indeed, it is critical for us to address this issue of smuggling of imported goods because it kills the local industry.”

Enrile cited, for instance, the huge number of Filipino farmers and traders being affected by the questionable importation of palm oil. “I just met the palm-oil growers in Mindanao, the local growers, and they are complaining that they are not getting any assistance from the government. They cannot compete with the importation of palm oil with this kind of pricing. They deserve the protection of the government.” He advised Biazon that Pangilinan’s committee will be expanding its inquiry, adding, “You better tell your people to be prepared. We will be subpoenaing them.”

Biazon, for his part, said it would be a good opportunity for the bureau to present “what moves and solutions we have been looking at” to strictly check questionable entry of imported food products. “We have to cooperate with one another to unmask the people who are doing this to our countrymen because it shows our inutility as a people and as a government if we could not arrest the situation. I, for one, am sure the chairman of the agriculture committee would not want to happen this to our country,” Enrile said. “We are  going to really rake this up and finish this issue once and for all and unmask the people behind this.”

Pangilinan, in backing Enrile’s motion, pointed out that “if you include employment directly and indirectly, by agriculture that is 66 percent of our labor force.”

“If you include the contribution of agriculture and the agri industry , manufacturing, etc. actually, 50 percent of  the GDP comes from agriculture-related industries. If smuggling goes unabated it will have direct impact on the health of the economy,” he said.

Enrile then suggested to Pangilinan that if the committee was moving to craft remedial legislation against smuggling, “A thorough overall [of the BOC] is necessary.”

To which Biazon promptly agreed: “That is what is needed, your honor, and we fully support that.”