The government’s mettle and political will stand to be tested following Mr. Marcos Jr.’s “no import policy” amid the widespread devastation of Luzon’s vegetable farms.
Not only vegetables. Other agricultural produce, including even fisheries, will likely be in short supply in the wake of typhoon “Egay” and the ongoing monsoon-induced rains.
Supply shortfalls will most likely trigger inflation in the coming months.
Mr. Marcos Jr., who is also the agriculture boss, vows immediate remedial measures to stabilize food supplies and head off possible higher prices of staples.
Remedial measures — of which “the no import policy” is the immediate visible response — which include definite actions aimed at unscrupulous food importers who use natural disasters as cover for unbridled smuggling.
Even as the Chief Executive stands firm, he qualifies this by saying, “We will not import any agricultural products unless we see the supply is so low that prices will become out of reach of ordinary consumers.”
Nothing is inherently wrong with importation if low supplies are the case.
But the Chief Executive must accurately determine, before import permits are issued, which food supplies are actually depleted and not just artificially created.
Which only means that Mr. Marcos Jr. and his officials have to hold in abeyance all issuances of food import permits by government agencies until further notice.
Often found spurious and used to smuggle billions in agricultural products, such import permits are now the subject of an intense fact-finding probe by the Department of Justice.
“We will trace where each import permit ended up,” said Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, referring to permits issued by the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, and the Bureau of Customs as the targets of intense scrutiny.
Mr. Remulla hopes the fact-finding on agricultural smuggling will be over in the “next two weeks,” though the difficult filing of economic sabotage charges against smugglers and hoarders might take at least two months.
We certainly hope Mr. Remulla more than fast-tracks the probes. Not only because his boss wants an end to spurious permits but also because many people are largely incredulous that government is seemingly toothless against hoarders and smugglers, failing to actually put these criminals behind bars.
It’s no ordinary issue. Farmers’ groups and even senators pointedly lament the fact that none of the publicly named smugglers and hoarders have been found guilty. It’s a sad state of affairs where even strong evidence that surfaced during congressional hearings was often deemed insufficient.
“None have proceeded beyond the preliminary investigations. All [of the cases] have been dismissed,” as one farmers’ group leader laments.
This, despite the passage seven years ago of Republic Act 10845, or the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act.
Will Mr. Remulla and his boss pull off a miracle? Will they be able to muster the mettle and political will against well-entrenched smuggling syndicates?
At any rate, appalling indeed it is that unscrupulous individuals and syndicates, likely with the connivance of government bureaucrats, are making a killing with spurious importations at the expense of Filipino consumers. Syndicates that by the way allegedly include a powerful Chinese mafia as exposed by Albay Rep. Joey Salceda late last year.
Referring to “class A information” from well-placed sources, Mr. Salceda declared with absolute certainty that a syndicate led by Chinese nationals was behind the smuggling into the country of prime agricultural products.
“This mafia is in control of agricultural smuggling in the country at every stage of the smuggling process, from transport to arrival to import permits and sanitary inspection,” Salceda said.
“They have people on the ships, at the ports, the inspections, the quarantines, the warehouses, and the economic zones. It’s very pervasive,” Salceda had said.
Moreover, not only is this alleged mafia engaged in the unbridled large-scale smuggling of billions of pesos worth of vegetables from China, but the mafia is also “strangling the supply” of major agricultural products.
We cannot allow this massive problem to go on.