|
THE
controversial acquisition of x-ray machines by the
Bureau of Customs (BOC) is up for scrutiny at the Senate
blue-ribbon committee when it conducts a separate
inquiry into the Northrail and Southrail projects, Sen.
Francis Escudero said Thursday.
He noted
that the $150-million deal for the x-ray machines
purchased by customs was part of a “side-agreement”
tucked into the $1.109-billion government-to-government
loan package arranged with China.
Sen.
Juan Ponce Enrile earlier elicited an admission from BOC
chief Napoleon Morales that the Chinese-supplied x-ray
units for “nonintrusive container inspection” of
container vans coming into Philippine ports cost at
least $2.5 million each.
Enrile
had confronted Morales about reports that businessman
Francis Chua, former special envoy to
China,
facilitated the x-ray deal, but the customs chief said
he could not confirm this.
Enrile
said the senators also want to verify reports that some
of these x-ray units were “not working well” and that
many were installed in areas that could not be
justified. He cited reports that even after these giant
machines have been installed in key ports in
Manila
and other major entry points of goods coming into the
country, the bureau “has not been able to control
smuggling.”
Interviewed at length at dwIZ’s radio talk show
Karambola Thursday morning, Morales said the
machines were purchased under a
“government-to-government” transaction, and the
acquisition had been on the government’s plans since
1999, or long before he assumed office as customs chief.
Deliberations were completed at the National Economic
and Development Authority (Neda) Board in 2005, where it
was agreed that obtaining such units was indispensable
to the customs modernization that would convince foreign
investors that Philippine operations were on world-class
level, and that authorities in
Manila
can meet as well stringent demands to monitor security
of shipments to curb global terrorism.
“We are
a member of the World Customs Organization, where we
exchange notes on capacity-building, and I’ll tell you
that we have the same machines as most countries that
modernized their customs—Indonesia, Malaysia, New
Zealand, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries,” Morales
told the dwIZ hosts.
He
surmised that the gap between the $2.5-million per-unit
price and the reported $1.9-million bill of other
countries owed to the different specifications,
specifically, “penetrating power.”
To
further justify the utility of the machines, Morales
said the BOC’s biggest drugs haul in years, the seizure
of P700-million precursor chemicals for making shabu,
was made possible by the use of the x-rays.
Even the
past practice of “squeezing in firearms” into certain
corners of shipments can be detected by the machines.
Smuggling is quickly detected and dealt with, he
explained, because with these units, the BOC no longer
has to wait for the owner or his representative to show
up, like before, “because with this one, we can
establish that there are smuggled items without opening
the container or breaking its seal.”
Fears
that selective smuggling could still be tolerated by
certain BOC staff were also ruled out, because,
explained Morales, “the records include the hard copy of
the images taken,” and these cannot be selectively shut
off or on, as some critics alleged. All the records are
there.”
Finally,
Morales claimed that the use of the machines was a
strong factor in the agency’s increasing its collections
from P196 billion in 2005 to P198.2 billion in 2006.
“Misdeclaration was reckoned with.”
Senators
had voiced concern over the BOC’s x-ray deal amid a
raging controversy over the allegedly overpriced
$330-million national broadband network deal with Zhong
Xing Telecommunications Equipment Co. Ltd. of China that
President Arroyo aborted amid a massive outcry.
Escudero
had moved to convene the congressional oversight
committee for overseas development assistance (ODA) to
check wanton approval of similar loan agreements that
the senator said went around constitutional provisions
that public funds “can only leave the Treasury pursuant
to an appropriation made by Congress.”
The
x-ray scanning machines bought by the BOC from China
were mentioned earlier by Enrile when finance and BOC
officials appeared at a budget hearing in the Senate.
On
Wednesday, Sen. Jamby Madrigal raised the matter anew
and pointed to one Franchis Chua, a former president of
the Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce, as having
brokered it.
In an
interview with another paper, Chua explained that as
special envoy, it was his task to encourage Chinese
investors to come into the Philippines, and related
action on this matter was his regular mandate.
The
purchase of the machines is part of the administration’s
so-called nonintrusive container inspection system (NCIS)
involving the installation of mobile or truck-mounted
x-ray machines to scan container vans in different ports
of the country. The NCIS project was implemented based
on Executive Order 592 signed by President Arroyo on
December 15, 2006.
In her
resolution, Madrigal said the government through the DFA
and the BOC signed a concessional loan agreement with
China in May 2006 and on January 15, 2007 to finance
phase 1 and 2 of the NCIS. The loan for phase 1 is for
$50 million for 10 units of the x-ray machines and for
phase 2 $100 million for 20 additional units.
Sources
from the Chinese business community said Chua was the
same businessman named in the importation of defective
dump trucks for the National Irrigation Administration
during the Marcos regime. He was also, according to
sources, involved in the importation of 200 China buses
for the DOTC in 1988-89. The buses were farmed out by
the DOTC to Metro Manila bus operators through the Metro
Manila Transit Corp. The bus operators who got the buses
under an installment program defaulted in their
payments. The buses which were repossessed by the MMTC
were consigned to the junkyard. |
