CUSTOMS officials raided on Thursday, August 18, 2022, a warehouse in San Fernando, Pampanga where thousands of sacks of sugar are allegedly being hoarded, the Office of the Press Secretary said.
Agents of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) together with the police trooped Lison Building in Barangay Del Pilar following the orders of Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez.
“Armed with a Letter of Authority (LOA) Number 08 15 149 2022 and Mission Order (MO) No. 08 15 2022 519, the Customs personnel immediately seized suspected hoarded of sacks of imported sugar from Thailand neatly stockpiled by the thousands inside the warehouse,” the OPS said in a statement.
Hundreds of sacks of sugar were also found inside delivery vans in the said warehouse.
Several imported items such as sacks of cornstarch from China, sacks of imported flour, plastic products, oil in plastic barrels, motorcycle parts and wheels of different brands, helmets, LED televisions sets and paints were also recovered during the operation.
The warehouse owners were given 15 days to present necessary documents to support the legitimacy of their imported items.
“If proven that the Thailand sugar was smuggled, the warehouse owners may face charges of smuggling in relation to the provisions of The Customs Modernization Act (CMTA),” the OPS said.
Rodriguez was acting on a directive from President Ferdinand "Bongbong” Marcos Jr. for the BOC to exercise its visitorial powers to all customs-bonded warehouses and to check on the inventory of imported agricultural products to find out if there is hoarding of sugar.
“The BOC’s Pampanga sugar warehouse raid may very well serve as a warning to unscrupulous traders who are currently hoarding their stocks of sugar in order to profit from the current artificial sugar shortage situation,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said there were reports that some traders were pushing for the importation of 300,000 metric tons (MT) of sugar to use it as a “cover for them to release the sugar they had hoarded but couldn't release as this would depress prices.”
He said, “such massive importation of sugar could result in windfall profits for the traders of at least P300 million with a portion of the amount earmarked as lobby money.”
Marcos earlier said the government is in the process of identifying how much sugar is in the country that can be brought out to the market.
He said this will allow the government to identify how much more sugar the country needs to import amid the looming scarcity of sweeteners.
Marcos thumbs down the importation of 300,000 MT of sugar, noting that the country does not need that much.
He said the country may import only around 150,000 MT of sugar by October.
The retail price of sugar in the country soared to around P100 per kilo due to the low supply brought about by the ravage of Typhoon Odette in sugarcane crops in December 2021. (SunStar Philippines)