DA cancels import permits

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol  INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol Tuesday ordered the cancellation of all import permits related to meat and plant products to fight against smuggling done through the “recycling” of such documents.

“I will sign this (special order) within the day,” Piñol told reporters. “The canceled permits, subject to review involving myself, may be reissued immediately if everything turns out to be in order.”

He said a technical working group has been formed to assess and handle the issuance of new permits.

“If there are 1,700 permits out there, I shall have 1,700 people in that group” to assure a speedy process, the agriculture chief said.

Clampdown

Piñol clarified that the move was against unscrupulous traders who avoided paying the proper import duties by using the same permit again and again.

He said the clampdown was also against traders who bring in goods that were declared as another product of lesser value.

“For example, smugglers of meat products say their shipment contains offal, which carry a 5-percent tariff, when these are actually choice cuts that are levied at 35 percent,” Piñol pointed out. Offal refers to parts removed from butchered animals—including innards—that are considered not edible or useful in the market where they come from, such as Europe.

Asked whether this campaign might affect domestic supply and prices, Piñol said there should be no such result. “We are not hindering legal importation, only those shipments that are illegal,” he said.

But he said that once he has signed the order, any shipment would not be released until the proper import permits have been reissued.

Disruption

He said the order would also cover plant products like onions and vegetables, which are among the commonly smuggled agricultural products.

The bureaus of Animal Industry and of Plant Industry— both under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture —are the agencies that issue import permits for meat and plant products, respectively.

Piñol said smuggling of agricultural products continued considering the discrepancy of trade data collated by the United Nations and the Philippines’ Bureau of Customs.

In a telephone interview, the Meat Importers and Traders Association (Mita) Inc. said Piñol should clarify the process concerning this initiative to avoid disruption in the supply chain.

“We have goods at port, we have containers [at sea], we have invested good money,” said Mita president Jesus C. Cham. “He should not disrupt legitimate business.”

Cham told the Inquirer that the issue of meat smuggling has been “hashed and rehashed so many times for decades under different administrations.”

Cham said that while the world continually moved toward open trade, the Philippine government kept up with campaigns that hobbled the Philippine meat industry.

“I think he (Piñol) has the wrong approach on this,” Cham said. “The problem is with Customs and not the people who apply for or issue permits. For your information, all permits are tagged electronically so [these] cannot be recycled.”

New source of corruption

In a statement, the Samahang Industriya sa Agrikultura or Sinag “welcomed with caution” Piñol’s latest pronouncements.

“The alert has been raised several times and several illegal shipments have been seized in the past months, but no one has been charged in court,” Sinag chair Rosendo So said.

“We are just hoping that the re-issuance of new import permits would not be a new source of corruption for some people,” said So.

The Sinag chair said the review of the import permits should start with the accreditation process for importers.

Sinag research suggested that, in the past five years, close to P200 billion worth of agricultural goods were smuggled into the country.