MANILA, Philippines – A week after President President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned hoarders manipulating the price of rice, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) inspected three warehouses in Bulacan on Thursday, August 24, and found these stocked with suspected smuggled imported rice.

The BOC led the inspection of FS Rice Mill, San Pedro Warehouse, and Great Harvest Rice Meal Warehouse, located in the boundaries of Bocaue and Balagtas towns in Bulacan and recovered about 202,000 sacks of imported rice from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

The warehouse owners were barred from retrieving the stocks until they could show documents proving these were legitimate rice importations.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez, who joined the inspection with Deputy Majority Leader Erwin Tulfo and other lawmakers, said the rice stock recovered from the warehouses situated inside the Intercity Industrial Complex in Balagtas, Bulacan, were about three months’ worth of supply.

“Technically that’s hoarding,” said Romualdez in an ambush interview with reporters.

What’s worse, Romualdez said, is that it’s the Filipino who is most burdened by price manipulation. Already, it is expected that the price of a kilo of rice will reach P60 by September as the Philippines goes through the lean months just before the harvest season of local farmers.

“We need to know if there is truly some basis to accusations that hoarders are responsible for the spike of rice prices in the market,” said Romualdez. “Inspections such as these send a powerful signal to all the hoarders and manipulators out there to stop burdening the Filipino people for profit.”

Marcos, who is the concurrent agriculture chief, has ordered to go after “hoarders and price manipulators who take advantage of the lean months before harvest season.” 

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Fears of rice cartels

Meanwhile, Marikina 2nd District Representative Stella Quimbo expressed fears over the possible “cartelization” among private rice importers taking advantage of the lean supply season. 

“Won’t they take advantage of this shortage?” Quimbo said in a mix of Filipino and English during the House hearing on the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) 2024 proposed budget on Tuesday, August 22.

“Won’t they form cartels and come together to create an artificial shortage situation and just agree to fix prices like what happened with the onion cartels?” 

Under the rice tariffication law, only private importers can buy rice. DA Undersecretary Mercedita Sombilla said during the hearing that what the government could do was to talk to other countries and persuade them to sell surplus supply to the private sector. 

Marcos earlier ordered a probe on suspected cartels, hoarders, and smugglers of agricultural commodities. The BOC is also being investigated by the Department of Justice. – Rappler.com