Group says Customs change, not Pangasinan man, needed

DAGUPAN CITY—Leaders of agriculture stakeholders in the country may have asked for the head of Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon but they denied they were supporting someone from Pangasinan to replace him in the agency.

Biazon has claimed that some people and interest groups are behind a demolition job to oust him from the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

Rosendo So, chair of the partylist group Abono, said the group “did not, and will not, endorse anyone for the position.”

“We want to make it clear that we do not endorse anyone. We do not know that certain Mr. G [from Pangasinan that] he mentioned,” So told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by telephone on Tuesday.

So said the country’s agriculture stakeholders had waited for 18 months for the reforms that Biazon had promised to implement in the BOC.

“The problem of smuggling continues. It was only after 18 months [after that promise] that we asked for his resignation. We went to see him about our complaints versus smuggling. We gave him data about undervalued and misdeclared commodities. We asked that the BOC furnish a copy of the inward foreign manifest to the Department of Agriculture to check shipment of commodities to the country. Up to now, nothing has happened,” So said.

So said agriculture sector leaders met in January and wrote President Aquino about massive smuggling of agricultural products.

On Sunday, agriculture producers said, last year alone,

P32 billion of agricultural products were smuggled in. Smuggled pork and chicken were worth P8 billion, while P3.8 billion of fish and aquatic products were smuggled, said the producers. Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon, with a report from Jeanette Andrade in Manila