Because of the government’s failure to fully implement its policies, more than P100 billion in annual government revenue is lost due to smuggling. In the affected sectors, jobs were lost and poverty increased.
One affected sector is the hog industry. According to the Bureau of Agriculture Statistics, 70 percent of the hog industry is composed of small backyard raisers, who are responsible for 60 percent of production. In the last two years, 20 percent have lost their livelihood largely because of government inaction.
Today, hog farmers nationwide are assembled in a Cebu conference to discuss a pork holiday. This means dramatizing their plight by not selling pork for a week to protest rampant smuggling. However, this may not be necessary if the recommendation given here is implemented.
Inward Foreign Manifest
The Inward Foreign Manifest (IFM) lists the imported products, the name of the vessel, and the arrival date.
The Bureau of Customs (BoC) gets the IFM two days before arrival. BoC refuses to give the IFM to the Department of Agriculture, which has the list of products with the import permits.
If the DA has this IFM, it can easily identify the products without import permits, and ask the BoC to apprehend the smuggled products.
Unfortunately, this is not happening today.
In January 2007, largely because of Alyansa Agrikultura’s insistence that the DA should get this IFM automatically from BoC, then Finance Secretary Margarito Teves and then Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA).
This MoA included the automatic transmittal of the IFM by the BoC to the DA.
Despite the Alyansa’s frequent pleadings, there was government failure in following up this MoA. Worse, the transmittal of IFMs to DA was completely stopped in November 2009.
AF 2025
On Feb. 10-11, 2010, a historic two-day conference was convened by Sen. Francis Pangilinan and Rep. Mark Mendoza, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, and private sector leaders (mostly from Alyansa Agrikultura and the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Industries).
For the first time, 200 principal players from the legislative, executive, and the private sectors agreed on short- and long-term recommendations to achieve an Agriculture and Fisheries vision for 2025 (AF 2025).
A high-priority recommendation was a DA anti-smuggling plan, which would include the automatic IFM transmittal from BoC to DA.
Today, one year and two months later, there is still no DA anti-smuggling plan, and still no automatic transmittal of the IFM.
There is good news. Secretary Alcala, who should be commended for significantly decreasing corruption, has acted decisively. After we sent him our March 30 Inquirer article on this issue, he wrote Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima on April 10 asking the BoC to automatically transit the IFM to DA.
We are now waiting for the execution of this recommendation.
Public-Private Partnership
With our people suffering from smuggling, we need a structure that will support the anti-smuggling strategy.
Today’s structure is not working. Government follow-up mechanisms on promised government actions are not in place.
We thus recommend the immediate creation of a Public-Private Partnership Against Smuggling (PPPAS) Oversight Group, similar to the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Anti-smuggling that was successful in implementing its mandate while it was in place.
Hopefully, the PPPAS group will result in effective follow-up action on government policies. Smuggling will then be successfully addressed.
(The author is chairman of Agriwatch. For suggestions, e-mail agriwatch_phil@yahoo.com or telefax (02) 85221.)