SOME 900 containers with 500,000 sacks of rice languish on the Manila docks despite long-ago issued customs clearances, raising suspicions that delivery delays deliberately created shortages and higher prices, reports the Manila Bulletin.

In some cases, container vans with sacks of imported rice have been staying more than 20 days in the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA)-managed ports.

PPA general manager Jay Daniel Santiago confirmed that there are indeed 888 container vans that are unusually being held at the storage area of the MICT.

The container vans sitting at the MICT storage area are estimated to contain around 20 million kilos of rice.

"While other cargoes are generally released within the allotted free storage period, some rice container shipments from some consignees remain at the ports for over 20 days despite having been cleared for release by the Bureau of Customs," said Mr Santiago.

The holding of the container vans loaded with rice triggered suspicion that the rice importers are deliberately delaying the release in order to create rice shortage which will eventually lead to price increase.

After the unloading of cargoes in Philippine ports, the shipments are given a five-day free storage period and citing PPA data, the shipments are generally released within the free storage period.

But this is not the case for the rice shipment based on the MICT data.

Mr Santiago suspected that the rice importers were deliberately holding the rice shipment at the MICT since doing so in private warehouses could lead to inspection and possible filing of charges relating to rice hoarding.

"We are coordinating with the Department of Agriculture so that when they issue permits to import, it should also require the consignees to immediately pull out from the ports to stabilise the price of rice in the markets," said Mr Santiago.

Lowering the price of rice is one of the main targets of the Marcos administration after netizens started to criticize the President over his alleged failure to make true of his campaign promise of bringing down the price of rice to P20 per kilo.