Arroyo inspects smuggled goods from 168 Mall

President Arroyo on Monday inspected millions of pesos worth of smuggled products confiscated by a composite team of police and customs officials last week during a raid of the famous 168 shopping mall in Divisoria, Manila, which houses more than a hundred retail stores. The President was accompanied by acting Bureau of Customs (BOC) Commissioner Napoleon Morales and Chief of Staff Michael Defensor when she examined the P100 million worth of merchandise, now being kept at the Manila International Container Terminal (MICT). The BOC had earlier said goods confiscated from the 168 shopping mall had a total value of about P700 million. The President congratulated the BoC for the raid; the biggest so far conducted by the bureau since Mrs. Arroyo first took over the presidency in 2001. After the inspection, Secretary Defensor and Morales met with owners of the various stalls leasing at the 168 shopping mall, who appealed the immediate reopening of the commercial shopping complex. The stall owners, represented by Pen Saquing, one of the lawyers of the Tenants Association of the 168 malls, said they have already lost millions of pesos because of the closure of their stores. Many of the owners of the retail stores were reportedly illegal aliens of Chinese nationality. Saquing tried to strike a compromise with Defensor and Morales and said stall owners are willing to pay back taxes and import duties, and get the required business documents from the Manila city hall in exchange for the reopening of the mall. Defensor insisted that legal proceedings should be followed so government could run after notorious smugglers responsible for the illegal entry of goods in the country. Some 700 BOC personnel and police operatives continue to inspect the different stalls in the 168 shopping mall. It is not clear yet how the goods have illegally made its way to the shopping mall. On Monday morning, thousands of pirated video compact discs and digital video discs, as well as imported garments, were forcefully taken from stalls whose owners refused to cooperate with the inspection team. Former finance secretary Joselito Camacho in 2005 cited that customs collections declined from 5.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in the mid-1990s to only 2.8 percent in 2002. Watch groups and economic think tanks have attributed this to smuggling and trade liberalization.-GMANews.TV