Customs seizes more onions

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has seized three containers filled with red onions from China worth P2.5 million, the sixth such shipment apprehended in the past four months.

This brought the total value of all the intercepted onions to about P33 million.

Customs Commissioner Angelito A. Alvarez said in a statement the latest shipment did not have an import permit from the Bureau of Plant Industry.

Alvarez said the 50,000 kilograms of onions were consigned to Interwide Trading and Airfreight Alliance Inc., which declared the shipment to be “pickles and juice.”

The customs chief said the series of confiscations of contraband onions prevented the entry into the local market of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of onions that would have hurt local producers.

According to Deputy Commissioner Horacio P. Suansing, the misdeclaration was discovered through a tip.

Last week, customs operatives confiscated more than 3,500 bags of smuggled onions worth more than P2 million in Tondo, Manila.

Suansing said most of the onions were being openly sold in warehouses on Bilbao Street while more than 1,000 bags were confiscated from two vans parked near one of the warehouses.

In August, the BOC seized at the Port of Manila two containers of onions worth more than P4 million. Consignee Biz Trade Corp. tried to pass off the shipment from China as “juice.”