PBBM wants measure passed amid high rice prices
PRESIDENT Marcos Jr. has certified as urgent the approval of the proposed Anti-Agricultural
Economic Sabotage Act, which is now under plenary deliberation at the Senate.
The proposed measure, Senate Bill. No. 2432, repeals the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act (Republic Act No. 10845) and seeks to punish the smuggling, hoarding, profiteering, and cartel of agricultural and fishery products as acts of economic sabotage, punishable with life imprisonment and a fine thrice the value of confiscated goods.
SBN 2432 defines agricultural economic sabotage as any act or activity that disrupts the economy by creating artificial shortages, promoting excessive importation, manipulating prices and supply, evading payment or underpayment of tariffs and customs duties, threatening local production and food security, gaining excessive or exorbitant profits by exploiting situations, creating scarcity, and entering into agreements that contravenes fair competition to the prejudice of the public.
In a letter dated September 20 and addressed to Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, the President underscored “the necessity of the immediate enactment” of SBN 2432 amid the rising prices of and shortages in agricultural products, especially rice, partly due to the nefarious acts of smuggling, hoarding, profiteering, and cartel.
Marcos has already imposed a price cap on regular and well-milled rice sold in the markets amid the rising cost of the grains. The government is giving a P15,000 subsidy to micro and small rice retailers affected by the price ceiling.
He has also started distributing smuggled imported sacks of rice confiscated by the Bureau of Customs to poor households.
The bill is one of the expanded Common Legislative Agenda discussed during the 3rd Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) meeting last Tuesday.
SBN 2432 is the consolidated version of various similar bills filed in the Senate. It is contained under Committee Report No. 18, which was sponsored in the Senate floor by Sen. Cynthia Villar, who is the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform.
In endorsing the approval of the bill, Villar has noted that the Philippine government has been losing at least P200 billion in revenues every year due to agricultural smuggling.
The Senate on Wednesday closed the period of interpellation for the measure, while a Technical Working Group is finalizing the version of the bill at the House of Representatives.
Aside from imposing grave penalties against agricultural economic saboteurs, the President said the measure will promote the productivity of the agriculture sector, protect farmers and fisherfolk from unscrupulous traders and importers, and ensure reasonable and affordable prices of agricultural and fishery products for consumers.
INTER-AGENCY COUNCIL
The measure proposes the creation of an Anti-Agricultural Economic Sabotage Council that will be chaired by the President, with members coming from the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Finance (DOF), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Transportation (DOTr),) Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), and the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC).
The Council shall also have one representative from each of the following agricultural sectors —sugar, rice and corn, livestock and poultry, vegetables and fruits, fisheries and other aquatic products; and tobacco.
A special team of prosecutors shall be formed by the DOJ that would assist in the expeditious prosecution of criminal cases covered by the Agricultural Economic Sabotage law.
An Anti-Agricultural Economic Sabotage Enforcement Group shall also be formed to assist in the stoppage of smugglers, hoarders, and profiteers.
The group shall include representatives from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Philippine National Police (PNP), Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), Philippine Ports Authority (PPA), Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), DA-Inspectorate and Enforcement (DA-I&E), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and various agricultural sectors.
Under the proposed legislation, any government officer or employee who will be found as an accomplice of agricultural smugglers, hoarders and profiteers shall “suffer the additional penalties of perpetual disqualification from holding public office, from exercising the right to vote, from participating in any public election, and forfeiture of employment monetary and financial benefits.”
In case the offender is a juridical person, criminal liability shall be filed against all the officers who participated in the decision that led to the commission of the crime and suffer the penalty of perpetual absolute disqualification to engage in any business involving importation, transportation, storage and warehousing, and domestic trade of agricultural and fishery products.
The proposed measure, when enacted, allows government authorities to confiscate the agricultural and fishery products that are the subject of economic sabotage, and the properties that were used in the commission of the crime such as vehicles, vessels, aircrafts, storage areas, warehouses, boxes, cases, trunks, and other containers of whatever character used as receptacle of agricultural and fishery products.
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan on Thursday said they would soon meet and discuss with the President the current rice situation in the country, including when to lift the temporary price cap imposed by Malacañang and other possible measures to keep the prices of rice down.
Balisacan, in a briefing after the NEDA Board meeting in the Palace, said one option to lower rice prices is to reduce the tariff on rice imports.
“We will meet soon to recommend other options. There are as I said earlier, there are options for example, we have made mention about reducing the tariff while world prices are rising,” he said, adding that these options have yet to be discussed with the President or in the Cabinet level.
“We have a meeting soon on that where we will present the options. The issue is, basically, that world prices of rice are rising and have risen quite sharply in recent months. And so the question is: Do we allow those high prices to be reflected in our local markets, particularly for our consumers? What do we need to do to ensure that we can protect our consumers so that we can still be rice-secured even as world prices are rising? So there are options to achieve that objective,” he added.
Balisacan said among the factors to be considered in maintaining or reducing the current tariff is world prices.
He said if the world prices are not rising, the tariff should not be reduced, but “when world prices are rising sharply and you don’t want that to come down to the level of our markets like for example the retail or the wholesale or even at the farm gate, of course, you have to find other options of protecting our people. And reducing the tariff temporarily would be such an option.”
The economic managers previously proposed a reduction in the current 35 percent rice import tariff rates, ranging from zero percent to 10 percent for both ASEAN and the most-favored nation (MFN).
Balisacan said the government is closely monitoring global rice prices and the export volumes of major rice-exporting nations.
