Pimentel seeks action vs Thai sugar import
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III —Senate PRIB
Malacañang must show the same gusto when it acted on last year’s sugar importation fiasco in investigating the alleged unlawful entry of a sugar shipment from Thailand last month, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III said Friday.
“They should be as aggressive or even more aggressive as they did [in the first incident],” Pimentel told reporters, referring to the botched attempt to bring in 300,000 metric tons (MT) of the agricultural commodity without President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s approval.
The President sits as chair of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), the sole state agency tasked with overseeing the country’s sugar supply, as the concurrent secretary of the Department of Agriculture.
READ: Smuggling of sugar from Thailand foiled at Subic port
Pimentel noted that the arrival of the imported sugar on February 9, as exposed by fellow opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros, was “more severe” as it entered the country without the required permits from the SRA.
“This situation is more severe since the first one only involved the legality of the sugar order,” Pimentel said.
“This time, there’s no sugar order when the [shipment] arrived in our port,” he said. “It’s not only lack of authority in issuing the sugar order … there is now some other administrative orders [issued] to release the sugar.”
Under the law, a sugar order was needed for any entity to import the agricultural commodity, he said.
READ: Sugar imports ahead of SRA order questioned
Agriculture Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban had earlier admitted that he had allocated the importation of 440,000 MT of sugar to three traders on January 13, or over a month before the SRA issued Sugar Order (SO) No. 6 authorizing such importation.
Panganiban then issued a memorandum on February 27 directing the SRA to clear the release of the sugar shipment from the Port of Batangas.
READ: SRA gets go-ahead to clear release of sugar imports
Pimentel also pressed the Senate blue ribbon committee, chaired by Senator Francis Tolentino, to immediately initiate an inquiry into the latest sugar importation issue.
Tolentino has yet to schedule an investigation since Hontiveros filed a resolution on February 21.
“If the executive branch won’t act and there is an issue that needs to be looked into, there’s the Congress that acts as second, sometimes it’s the first, line of defense [against corruption],” Pimentel said.
“We hope the Senate blue ribbon committee will investigate this case because this goes deep. But this will be easier to [untangle] with what we have learned with the first investigation,” he said.
READ: Belated clearance won’t justify unauthorized sugar importation – Pimentel
The chamber’s anti-graft panel had investigated the alleged unauthorized issuance of SO No. 4 in August last year, which resulted in the filing of graft and administrative charges against Agriculture Undersecretary Leocadio Sebastian and former SRA executives Hermenegildo Serafica, Roland Beltran, and Aurelio Valderrama Jr.
The controversy was also said to be a major reason behind the sudden departure of then Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez, the President’s former lawyer and spokesperson, from the Cabinet in September 2022.
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