'BOC should have more teeth in curbing undervaluation'

Lawmakers should consider giving more teeth to the Bureau of Customs (BOC) in deterring undervaluation of rice shipments in their proposed amendments to the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL).

- JASPER EMMANUEL ARCALAS

This is to curb state tariff collection losses, an industry group said.

The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) said the Senate bill on the proposed RTL amendments must contain provisions that would minimize undervaluation of rice imports which is causing the government billions in tariff collection losses.

The group estimated that the state's foregone tariff revenues have reached at least P29 billion between 2019 and July this year, an amount it noted could have been used to support rice farmers in the country.

One of the proposed provisions of the group is the establishment of a threshold level of deviation of declared prices of imported rice from the BOC's reference price.

With such a mechanism in place, any rice shipments with a declared value lower than the threshold would be automatically flagged to customs personnel as potentially undervalued.

The law must also stipulate the requirement of posting bonds for importers whose shipments were flagged as potentially undervalued equivalent to the additional tariff that they would have been paid if the threshold had not been breached, according to the group.