THE country has lost P60 billion in revenues in its import-export trade with China alone last year due to smuggling and massive corruption under former Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina, Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon said.
In a briefing late Tuesday, Faeldon said official documents from exporting countries have started coming in and China recorded $26 billion in exports for the whole of 2015.
However, records presented by Lina showed imports from China only amounted to $11 billion.
“The discrepancy of $15 billion in the undervalued imported goods had dutiable fees of $1.6 billion, equivalent to P60 billion in revenues, that was lost to corruption under my predecessor [Lina],” Faeldon said.
“The P60 billion in forgone revenues only came from one country, China, whose total transaction represented only 19 percent of total imports,” he added.
Faeldon said his office was investigating corruption in the bureau and initial findings showed erring importers and brokers in collusion with Customs officials have been involved in defrauding the government of the revenues by deliberately not collecting the right levies.
Faeldon said the previous administration did nothing to stamp out corruption in the bureau for the past six years as evidenced by the government’s filing only of six graft charges under the term of former President Benigno Aquino III.
“That means the previous administration, despite the massive corruption, only filed one graft case a year. They really did nothing to clean up the bureau of corrupt officials,” Faeldon said.
“It shows there was zero-effort from the previous administration to clean up the bureau yet we found these same corrupt officials involved in the scheme for already a long period of time,” Faeldon added.
He said in just four months in office, the new leadership has already filed 30 graft charges against corrupt Customs officials.
Faeldon confirmed claims made by President Rodrigo Duterte that the country was losing P300 million a day from 17 ports nationwide due to corruption.
“We were able to confirm the President’s pronouncements about the massive corruption in Customs and we are now doing everything to address this issue because every peso lost in corruption deprives the people of better social and health services like schools, hospitals, roads and bridges,” Faeldon said.
He said his office has found out that the P300 million in losses have been pocketed by corrupt officials who had a heyday in collecting P30,000 per container from unscrupulous importers and brokers who refused to pay the correct levies.
Faeldon cited as example the case of pharmaceutical company Pfizer, whose imported goods had been withheld for paying only P3 million in tariffs when the correct levy to be paid was P32 million.
He said criminal and civil charges had also been filed against Customs officials involved in the importation of fuel of Petron and Shell for misdeclaring the product as crude oil, which carries only a three percent of levy, when it should be slapped with a five percent tariff since imported petroleum was categorized as “finished product.”
Faeldon said aside from illegal drugs, firearms and petroleum products, items being smuggled into the country were rice, meat and poultry products, sugar, onions, garlic, among others.
Under its anti-smuggling campaign, Faeldon said the bureau was able to apprehend agricultural products such as 5,000 sacks of rice that were intercepted last October 17, 2016 at Baliwasan Seaside Pier in Zamboanga City; some 2,898 sacks of rice that were confiscated last October 6 at a warehouse in Mampang, Zamboanga City; and 11,000 sacks of rice that were apprehended at Lamitan Port, also in Zamboanga City.
Faeldon said the bureau has confiscated 1,100 sacks of rice and 100 boxes of cigarettes at Pigasan Point in Jolo, Sulu in a passenger vessel last Sept. 3, 2016.
Some 111 master cases of assorted cigarettes were also confiscated at a warehouse in Cagayan de Oro last Oct. 11, 2016.
In Manila ports, at least nine containers of sugar were confiscated after these were declared as “steel tubes and scaffolding” while 88 containers of onions were found abandoned at the Manila International Container Port.
“We want to level the playing field. It would be unfair to importers who follow the rules when they compete with these smugglers who can sell their products at a lower price for failing to pay the lawful tariffs or misdeclaring their products or worse, smuggling them,” Faeldon said.
Faeldon said while the investigation was ongoing, he considers all 11,000 importers and 5,000 brokers as smugglers.