Bureau of Customs (BOC) | FILE PHOTO
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) should start making use of new, although very common, technology in its fight against smuggling.
If the BOC can find onions in an airplane passenger’s luggage, “then there is no reason it cannot detect ships as big as malls carrying smuggled sugar” with technology in use all over the world, House Deputy Speaker Rep. Ralph Recto said in a statement on Friday.
“In this age of AirTags, it will be hard for cargo to vanish into thin air. Lost wallets can be found with AirTags, what more of a shipping container as big as a house?” Recto said, referring to a tracking device of the American tech firm Apple Inc.
He said the BOC should expand and maximize the use of tracking technology to follow monitored cargo, if it is still having difficulty curbing smuggling, especially agricultural products.
The BOC uses the Electronic Tracking of Containerized Cargo (E-Tracc) system for the real-time monitoring of inland movement of containers using global positioning system devices.
The E-Tracc is a web-based system, launched by the BOC in 2020, to track the inland movement of containerized cargoes during transit and transfer to other customs territories and facilities.
The E-Tracc can also detect the diversion and tampering of containers while it is en route to its destination.
“The benefit of an expanded E-Tracc clearly outweighs the cost of doing it,” Recto said.
He also called on the BOC to further study what tracking technology can be used to monitor the movement of containers with agricultural products “from the port of origin to its eventual destination here.”
P27.3-M smuggled sugar
Recto issued the statement as Malacañang announced on Friday that the Department of Agriculture (DA) and law enforcement agencies seized 11 container vans of smuggled refined sugar worth P27.3 million.
Press Secretary Cheloy Velicaria-Garafil said the seized shipments were consigned to Kanluran Consumer Goods Trading and came from China.
On Feb. 6, authorities inspected three container vans and discovered P7.44 million worth of refined white sugar instead of the declared motorcycle spare parts.
Authorities found smuggled refined white sugar, worth P9.92 million, after inspecting four container vans.
During a follow-up operation on Feb. 16, they again inspected four container vans with refined white sugar, amounting to P9.92 million.
Garafil said criminal cases would be filed against the shipments’ consignee “for misdeclaration and misclassification” in violation of the Food Safety Act of 2013 and the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016.
Agriculture Assistant Secretary James Layug said there were still six containers that would undergo physical inspection.
Garafil said a total of 17 containers were placed under alert status by the BOC in line with the national government’s antismuggling campaign after the DA’s request on Jan. 17.
The DA earlier filed smuggling charges against the captain and crew of M/V Sunward after the confiscation of P400 million worth of smuggled sugar in Batangas. The vessel carried around 4,000 metric tons of smuggled white refined sugar from Thailand.