The Philippines’ Department of Finance (DOF) has directed the bureaus of Customs and Internal Revenue (BIR) to track down manufacturers of counterfeit tobacco products, according to a story in The Business Mirror.
The DOF wants tracked down also what were described as the manufacturers’ cohorts in the government who helped let into country the unlicensed cigarette-making machines being used by the manufacturers.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III has ordered Customs Commissioner Isidro S. Lapeña and BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay to disable the confiscated machines used to make counterfeit tobacco products.
“I want to hit them with everything you’ve got, the Customs and the BIR, and get to the bottom of this,” Dominguez said during a recent Executive Committee meeting.
Dulay and Lapeña were told also to find out how the machines for manufacturing fake cigarettes, uncovered in recent operations in Luzon and Mindanao, were able to enter the country undetected by the authorities.
Manufacturing a problem
