Illegal cigarette-making machines destroyed
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:20:32 +0000
Several machines used in making illegally traded cigarettes were destroyed as the Department of Finance stressed the need for heightened government vigilance against the illicit manufacture and sale of tobacco products.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd, who led the activity, said on a statement on Friday that the destroyed contraband included units and parts of three filter maker machines, two packaging machines, and a cigarette-making machine, along with 484 master cases of various finished cigarette brands and raw materials used in making cigarettes such as filter rods, tipping papers, packaging foil, acetate tow, and other supplies.
The machines were bulldozed into pieces while a grinder destroyed the cigarettes. The contraband, seized by the BIR from illegally operating cigarette factories in Pampanga and Pangasinan, was destroyed at the DiGaMa Waste Management Services facility in Porac, Pampanga.
“The destruction of these confiscated contraband will send a clear two-pronged message: Illicit manufacturing will not be tolerated. Tax evasion will be hounded ceaselessly,” Dominguez was quoted as saying during the event.
He said this would not be the first time that illicit cigarettes were destroyed and would certainly not be the last. “But this is the first time we are destroying the machines that make them. Destroying them will ensure that they can never again be used to defraud the government of what it is due and to cheat consumers by peddling them counterfeit products,” he said.
With a single cigarette-making machine capable of producing 20,000 sticks per minute, which is equivalent to about 9.6 million sticks during an eight-hour shift or 480,000 packs per day, the government has effectively blocked attempts of being defrauded of as much as P16.8 million per day of much-needed revenues for human capital development and the “Build Build Build” program by destroying these confiscated machines and products, he added.
“By destroying illicit tobacco products, we remove all temptation to sneak them back into the market. By destroying the machines that make them, we raise the risks for doing illicit manufacturing exponentially higher. Both will do the public some good,” Dominguez said.
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