Manila Bulletin, Philippines : Opinion & Editorial

01/010/2003

Log & Rice Smuggling

By Romeo V. Pefianco

Editor’s note: Illegal logging and rice smuggling are two activities that occur with admirable regularity as cited in this article.

FOR years now, two highly transparent and visibly illegal activities cannot be stopped by all the forces of the national and local governments: 1) illegal logging and 2) rice smuggling.

Let’s deal first with illegal logging, its widespread protection and destructive effect on the national economy.

Known to local officials/enforcers

Logs and roughly sawn lumber are loaded on huge trucks/trailers coming from northern and northeastern Luzon, traveling at night or early morning. All kinds of documentation accompany the shipment to sawmills north of Manila or within the city itself.

Consumers are deceived

Retailers, like lumber yards within our neighborhood, sell the tañguile dos por dos for about R26 per board foot. The bite or trimming of a circular saw, about one-half inch, is deducted from the sliced wood or a net of 1¾” by 1¾” in lieu of 2” by 2.”

(I once bought a dos por dos near Chicago and the American standard is exactly 2” by 2” of clean wood.)

Huge profit

The profit from logs illegally felled and sold to sawmills is staggering. Consumers who pay taxes have no choice but to buy and curse in silence.

In a previous article I wrote about an illegal sawmill operating in the middle of a forest in southern Luzon. I also mentioned the searing noise of a mini-sawmill in a forested area a few towns south of Manila.

Our law enforcers and forest rangers get fed up with serving arrest warrants on the same persons a few times in one month.

Illegal loggers enjoy protection from elective local officials and some members of Congress. Policemen themselves talk openly of their frustration and the habit of some politicians to befriend illegal loggers.

Difficulty in legal logging

Cutting a tree in one’s own backyard is a difficult process. The tree and lot owner would need a local and national permit. The paper work requires about three to five days to complete if the five to 10 bureaucrats are in town to sign papers and the permit.

Irreversible damage

After the forest is cleared of big trees strong water currents erode the mountainside and flood the plains, farms and highways (built a few inches higher than the rice fields).

Slash-and-burn farmers would then occupy the treeless government land and make the damage permanent as kaingeros prevent reforestation.

Rice smugglers have good statistics

Smuggling rice from Vietnam, Thailand, etc. to fill local need has been going on for years. The Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, and in less than 10 years the war-torn nation restored its economy.

In 1992, Vietnam offered incentives to foreign investors. In 1994, President Clinton ended the trade embargo against Vietnam and in July 1995 full diplomatic relations with the US were established.

RP/Vietnam civil code

Vietnam’s national assembly adopted its first-ever national civil code under the Communist government. The code spelled out rights to land, personal property, inheritance, and capital formation. About 90 percent of the assembly members voted in favor of the code.

(Vietnam, a former French colony up to Sept. 2, 1945, is familiar with the Napoleonic Code which is also the basis of RP’s own Civil Code of 1889.)

Veteran traders/smugglers

When our government announces the rice import quota for any year this is not new to veteran rice traders in the ASEAN region. They can guess rightly (and accurately) RP’s rice import range of 800,000 to 1M metric tons (MT) from January to December.

Rice smugglers/traders are faster than our bureaucrats in contacting and paying exporters in dollars. They can also buy cheap with ready cold cash. RP rice traders are a dime a dozen in Hanoi (in the north) and Ho Chi Minh (in the south). They are on a first-name basis with Vietnamese businessmen.

Buying it cheap

If the official price is $185 per metric ton, rice smugglers can pay cash probably 30 percent less. That’s the reason rice smugglers are never caught even if the evidence is one big boat loaded with rice.

There are various ports in the whole country where contraband articles and commodities can be unloaded without getting caught. The message is, “spread the sunshine.”

We read about Customs officers who were “disciplined” for forgetting to arrest/detain smugglers.

This form of “amnesia” is temporary and repeated yearly by the same group of law enforcers. This elite class of lawmen is exempt, in whole or in part, from the lifestyle check. (Comments are welcome at rvp@fastmail.i-next.net)