BY BETHEENA UNITE
Close to 500 bags of rice worth more than half a million pesos from Taiwan were intercepted at the Port of Cebu on Monday.
The Bureau of Customs said that instead of the declared items – personal effects – the shipment was found to contain a total of 495 bags of Myanmar white rice
It has an estimated market value of P525,857, the Port of Cebu said.
The bags of rice were intercepted following an intelligence report on July 23 that a shipment loaded with imported rice will arrive at the Port of Cebu from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Investigation showed that the shipment’s inward foreign manifest declared it to contain personal effects. It was also not covered by any Sanitary and Phytosanitary Clearance from the Bureau of Plant Industry.
According to the bureau, it was consigned to a certain Theresa Lawas, of Barangay Pansoy, Sogod in Cebu. However, verification with Barangay Pansoy confirmed that it had no resident named Theresa Lawas. (Betheena Unite)
