The government must investigate the undervaluation of rice imports which is estimated to have shortchanged the national coffers by as much as P3.84 billion in the first seven months of 2022 alone, according to the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF).
Raul Montemayor, FFF national manager, said based on the Bureau of Customs (BOC) data from January to June this year, 85 percent of the 2.28 million MT of imported rice were undervalued by an average of P5,664 per MT.
The group said the BOC recently intercepted shipment of 38,400 metric tons (MT) of rice being unloaded at Iloilo port on suspicion of smuggling.
FFF said BOC Western Visayas regional office considered the shipment above-board as importers paid customs duties amounting to P83 million.
But Montemayor said the BOC should have collected at least P350 million on the P1- billion shipment based on the official tariff rate of 35 percent, indicating the imported rice was undervalued by as much as 75 percent.
“Despite repeated dialogues with the BOC and several Senate hearings, very little has actually been done to curb undervaluation of rice imports. There is a lot of attention on smuggling but government losses from undervaluation are probably much larger. And it is easier to plug loopholes to prevent undervaluation than to run after smugglers,” Montemayor said.
The group said the BOC also stopped publishing reference prices starting August last year for certain rice grades being regularly imported, resulting to the inability of stakeholders to verify undervaluation.
“It is difficult to understand why importers are unloading huge volumes in Iloilo, when the province and the whole Region 6 are the rice granary of the Visayas. It would be more logical to bring them directly to deficit provinces like Cebu, Samar and Leyte. To make matters worse, the imports are coming in just when farmers in Iloilo are about to start harvesting,” Montemayor added.
According to data from the Bureau of Plant Industry, 2.55 million MT of imported rice have arrived in the Philippines as of August 18.
Majority came from Vietnam equivalent to 2.07 million MT or 81 percent of the total rice imports that already entered the country. -J. Macapagal