A HOUSE panel approved on Wednesday a measure seeking to amend the country’s anti-smuggling law to impose harsher penalties and lower the price limit for smuggling, hoarding, profiteering and cartelizing of agri-fishery and tobacco products to qualify as economic sabotage.
“Perpetrators of economic sabotage who have continually evaded punishment at the expense of the livelihoods of Filipino farmers and fisherfolk may finally face prosecution commensurate to the damage caused by their actions,” Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Angela B. Suansing, who headed the technical working group that fine-tuned the bill, told the House Agriculture and Food Committee.
The current law, Republic Act No. 10845, declares as economic sabotage only large-scale smuggling of agricultural commodities. In the proposed amendment, large-scale smuggling tantamount to economic sabotage includes rice with a fair-market value of P1 million rather than P10 million in the current law.
The amendments also impose a harsher punishment of life imprisonment on the main violators, House Agriculture and Food panel chairman and Quezon Rep. Wilfrido Mark M. Enverga told reporters after the hearing.
Accomplices — who may include public officials — can be imprisoned for up to 40 years and will have to pay six times the fine of the fair-market-value of the commodity. Those involved in tracking and warehousing suffer up to 20 years of imprisonment.
Under the bill, agri-fishery commodities include rice, sugar, corn, pork, poultry, beef, lamb, garlic, onion, carrots, cruciferous vegetables, coconut, coconut oil, palm oil, palm olein, wheat, fish, and shellfish. Tobacco products in the measure include manufactured and unmanufactured tobacco.
Classified as a priority measure of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), it is targeted for approval by December. — Beatriz Marie D. Cruz