The Department of Agriculture (DA) will investigate the sale of carrots believed to be smuggled from China after Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol made a surprise
inspection of a market in Batangas.
Piñol on Wednesday said he found Chinese carrots being sold in Tanuan City, Batangas, at a “very low” price of P35 per kilogram. He added that traders may have been able to bring in the carrots by misdeclaring their cargo.
“When I confronted the young Chinese trader where he got the carrots, he said it came from importers in Nueva Ecija. I assume that the volume is not small because it reached Tanuan,” he said in his Facebook post on July 26.
“There could only be one explanation and that is smuggling,” he added.
Piñol said he has already instructed DA officials to conduct an investigation into the presence of smuggled carrots in local markets. Currently, traders are not allowed to source carrots from China.
“I assure our farmers that heads will roll. If Bureau of Plant Industry [BPI] officials or other agriculture officials are involved, I will make sure they will be punished severely,” he said.
BPI Officer in Charge Vivencio R. Mamaril said it is “highly probable” that the carrots discovered by Piñol were smuggled, as the Philippines buys it only from the US and Australia.
“We do not import carrots from China because it is prohibited. As of now, China is not included in the list of countries allowed to export to us,” Mamaril told reporters in an interview.
Currently, Mamaril said four local trading firms import as much as 500 kilograms of carrots from the US and Australia. He said these are sold and distributed to institutional customers, such as hotels, restaurants and airline companies.
“The port of arrival of all imported carrots is the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which means the cargo is delivered by plane, so the landed cost is high,” he said.
“Because if those imports were transported via plane and underwent clearance procedures, will a businessman sell that at P35 per kg? That’s too low. So our assumption is that the carrots were smuggled,” he added.
Mamaril said the carrots believed to be sourced from China entered the Philippines with import clearances from the BPI, as it was not declared as an agricultural product.
He said the BPI will start investigating the matter by meeting with the four local importers of carrots. “We will also check the actual arrival of imports. We’re already gathering the data of all the carrots that arrived.”
As of the first week of July, the prevailing retail price of carrots in the National Capital Region and Region 4 is at P50 per kg, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
PSA data also showed that the country’s carrot production in 2016 declined by 1.56 percent to 65,986.86 metric tons (MT), from 67,036.96 MT recorded in 2015.