No explanation accompanied the Malacañang announcement yesterday about the ouster of Yogi Filemon Ruiz as chief of the Bureau of Customs. Ruiz headed the BOC’s enforcement and security service before he was picked to head the bureau in July last year. He previously also served as a regional director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
Ruiz has been replaced by Bienvenido Rubio, a native of Batac, Ilocos Norte who rose from the ranks in the BOC. Rubio headed the port operations service of the Assessment and Operations Coordinating Group prior to his promotion to the top post in a bureau that has long been hounded by controversies involving smuggling and corruption.
In the previous administration, PDEA officials had lamented that tons of shabu were entering the country under the noses of BOC personnel. These days, the bureau has been under fire for what appears to be the continuing smuggling of agricultural products including onions, going by the results of recent raids.
Related to agricultural commodities, Malacañang has also restored Leocadio Sebastian to his post as undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture. Sebastian resigned in August last year after he approved the importation of 300,000 metric tons of sugar amid a shortage that saw prices of the commodity soar by about 100 percent from December 2021 levels.
The importation was not cleared with President Marcos, the concurrent agriculture secretary, and certain quarters insisted there was no shortage that would justify importation. As prices surged, however, not only of sugar but also of processed foods that use sugar particularly soft drinks and juices, the shortage became real enough for the government to approve in September the importation of 150,000 MT of white refined sugar. Experts said the importation was too little, too late; regular retail prices still range from P92 to a whopping P138 a kilo.
Sebastian, who was later cleared in the sugar mess, is now in charge of the DA’s rice industry development program. This comes amid warnings that the country could face another rice crisis this year. Sebastian, an agricultural scientist, had served for nearly a decade as director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
Experts have cited structural weaknesses and problems across the agricultural value chain. The personnel movements must be part of an effort to address problems besetting the agriculture sector and national food security. Let’s hope the personnel changes lead to positive results.