The House Committee on Ways and Means has vowed to pin down the alleged Chinese mafia behind the agricultural smuggling in the Philippines as soon as Congress resume sessions this year, 2023.

Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, chairman of the said committee, said the panel has “Class A” information from various sources that these supposed “cabal of Chinese nationals and their associates is in control of agricultural smuggling in the country at every stage of the smuggling process, from transport to arrival, to import permits and sanitary inspection.”

“Intelligence sources tell us that the main characters are Chinese, or their associates...The tentacles are all over, but I am told that it is a small group, so if we can get to the core group, we should be able to pin the system down,” Salceda said in a statement.

“Based on initial reports, it seems that they took stronger hold of our processes starting 2018, during a period of high food inflation. Rice tariffication helped undercut their control significantly in the rice trade sector. But with high non-tariff barriers in other areas, specially in the issuance of sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances and other administrative requirements, the system is susceptible to abuse and capture,” he explained.

The lawmaker pointed out that most of the smuggled goods come from China, which include onions seized in Alabang this November, and broccoli and carrots seized in Divisoria last April.

He also said the House tax panel will appeal to the Marcos administration to strengthen the Sub-Task Group on Economic Intelligence (STG-EI), a group composed of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Bureau of Customs (BOC), National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), and Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG), so it can conduct more seizures and arrests.

Salceda said the committee will investigate the process “from top to bottom, and from end to end.”

“They have people in the ships, the ports, the inspections, the quarantines, the warehouses, and the economic zones. It’s very pervasive,” he noted.

The committee is also bent on working with third parties that have audited the country’s import systems to ensure transparency.

Salceda explained a system that is made publicly available and allows them to monitor major shipments in real time should help curtail smuggling and abuse of the imports processes.

“We are studying how process and rules changes can fight agricultural smuggling. That’s part of our policymaking function. But we hope to pin down the agri-smuggling mafia so that we can close the opportunities for their ways,” the lawmaker reiterated.