THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has shut down a warehouse illegally manufacturing tobacco products inside the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga earlier this year, where 1.65 million packs of cigarettes supposedly intended for export to Malaysia were seized by its strike team, the Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement yesterday.
In a report to Carlos Dominguez, DOF secretary, the BIR said the warehouse of GB-BEM Cigarette Co. Inc. operating as a cigarette factory inside Clark was padlocked last February 5 because of it does not have a permit to operate, as required to manufacture cigarettes.
“The company claims that it has a tolling agreement with a Malaysian-based client and that the cigarettes are 100 percent exported. However, the finished products did not bear any markings that they were for export and that these were manufactured in the Philippines,” Arnel Guballa, BIR deputy commissioner, said during a DOF executive committee meeting held before the implementation of the Luzon-wide Enhanced Community Quarantine.
Guballa said a total of 1,656,888 packs of cigarettes were seized from the warehouse of GB-BEM.
The BIR has monitored the establishment since last year following reports it has received that the cigarettes made in GB’s factory bear tax stamps similar to those issued by the Malaysian government, Guballa said.
Guballa said the BIR has also confirmed that tobacco products made by GB are loaded into containers and received by Malaysian clients, but without the proper tax markings.
Dominguez has instructed both the BIR and the Bureau of Customs to coordinate with Malaysian officials and raise this concern before.
