MANILA 3rd District Representative Joel Chua criticized the Bureau of Customs (BOC) for allegedly being “unprepared” to deal with the massive cigarette smuggling activities in the country, noting the bureau’s unreadiness to face the House Committee on Ways and Means during an inquiry on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026.
The Manila lawmaker noted that BOC’s unpreparedness to deal with cigarette smuggling in the country is evidenced by the bureau’s arrival at the House of Representatives without a formal letter from Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno explaining why he could not attend the hearing and without a presentation prepared for the committee.
“I notice most of the invited guests like the Department of Finance, the BIR, so forth and so on eh dumating po sila dito prepared (they arrived prepared),” Chua said.
“But, unfortunately, for the Bureau of Customs aside from the fact wala po yung kanilang commissioner, wala po silang presentation (their commissioner is not here, they also don’t have a presentation).” “It seems they are not prepared despite the more than five days of invitation.
So, maybe that is precisely the reason bakit tayo nalulusutan ng mga smuggling. Mukha iyong simpleng ganito parang hindi nila napaghandaan (why smuggling gets through us. It seems they are unprepared even for something as simple as this),” he added.
Chua’s remarks came after Representatives Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro and Miro Quimbo of Marikina City reprimanded BOC Deputy Commissioner for intelligence Romeo Allan Rosales for Nepomuceno’s absence. According to Rodriguez, a formal letter from Nepomuceno is needed explaining why he could not attend the congressional inquiry.
“It is the rule of the committee in the event there is a reason that is beyond your control that you can’t attend at the very least advise the committee because after all the committee is only here to help the agencies perform its job,” Quimbo, the committee’s chairperson, said.
“But for the record, we didn’t receive any letter coming from the commissioner although we were informally informed,” he added. The House Committee on Ways and Means held an inquiry into the large-scale tobacco smuggling in the country on Wednesday, where Quimbo described the worsening illicit tobacco trade as “the new POGO,” referring to the banned Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations.
For his part, Rosales said that the hearing coincided with Nepomuceno’s role as the guest speaker at an Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) event. “Mr. Chair, my apologies for not being able to put up a presentation but we have here, we collated all the data regarding all smuggling operations, all apprehensions of cigarette and tobacco products and all the cases filed and the cases existing now,” he told the committee..
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