CUSTOMS officials announced over the weekend it would auction off almost 5.5 million kilograms of rice on October 7. The new schedule was set after Commissioner John Sevilla canceled the original auction date of September 16.
Sevilla said he did so after Port of Manila officials failed to comply with the 10-day period within which to conduct the auction of contraband from the date of publication.
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) said the rice shipment arrived inside 245 20-foot container vans on the Port of Manila late last year.
The minimum floor price is set at P38.93 million, or P48.67 per kilogram, for glutinous rice; and P120.93 million, or P25.87 per kilogram, for white rice.
The BOC expects to generate P159.86 million from the auction.
Port of Manila District Collector Mario Mendoza said the auction of the “hot” rice will help in their effort to decongest South Harbor.
Mendoza said the shipments will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis, while the proceeds of the auction will be held in trust by the BOC as these shipments are the subject of ongoing court cases.
The shipments were seized by customs operatives due to lack of the required import permits from the National Food Authority.
A total of 160 of the container vans seized were consigned to Silent Royalty Marketing Inc., while the balance of 85 was imported by Bold Bidder Marketing. Both invoked the lifting of the quantitative restrictions (QR) on rice importations by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to justify their lack of import permits.
The BOC, however, said the WTO Committee on Trade and Goods recently allowed the Philippines to extend its special treatment for rice through the imposition of QR until 2017.
“We are well within the bounds of the law to dispose of these rice shipments to preserve its value and prevent deterioration while under our custody even while the cases are litigated,” Mendoza said.
In a related development, the BOC said authorities on Friday intercepted in Margosatubig, Zamboanga del Sur, a shipment of rice suspected to be smuggled from Sandakan, Malaysia.
Customs officials said authorities arrived at the dock and stopped the shipment being loaded into four 10-wheeler trucks from MV Amnesia.
The shipment contained about 4,000 50-kilogram sacks of rice and is now on hold in the area.
The BOC said the vessel’s captain, identified as Jade Jackaria, failed to show any import permit for the shipment.