President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to continue conducting raids on warehouses that are keeping suspected smuggled rice.

As such, BOC Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio said that the agency will double its efforts to find agricultural products that illegally entered in the country.

According to Rubio, the President directed them to validate all warehouses where all imported rice is imported, and the BOC will issue letters of authority to inspect the warehouses after the validation.

In a Palace briefing, the customs commissioner provided an update on the raid conducted by the BOC on three warehouses in Balagtas, Bulacan, where over P500 million worth of rice is hidden.

The BOC temporarily closed the warehouses and ordered the owners to provide documents within 15 days to prove that the imported rice legally entered the country and paid the correct taxes.

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 sacks of rice stored in three warehouses came from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.