The Bureau of Customs (BoC), experiencing a congestion of seized pirated goods in its warehouse, Monday requested the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to provide the bureau a shredding machine that would be used for the disposal of imitated imported products.

Lawyer Willie Sarmiento, head of the Customs Intellectual Property Unit (IPU), said they have been experiencing difficulties on the mode of disposition of counterfeit products that's why they are finding ways to have a shredding machine.

The machine, worth $3 million, is capable of destroying pirated digital versatile discs (DVDs), men's and women's apparels and accessories, canned goods, cellular phones and even hard objects such as sporty rubber shoes.

“If you look at our warehouse, it has been filled with pirated goods that we have confiscated over the years. And the problem is how will we dispose them,” Sarmiento said, adding that his intellectual officers “can't sell or donate these fake items” and are using steamroller to run over them.

He stressed that they have even encountered a dilemma while they have been enforcing the law and confiscating bogus products because of this perennial problem.

“Yes there is a proliferation of imitation products in the Philippines but there are other countries that have bigger problems on piracy. In the Philippines, we may lack resources, we may have some loopholes with existing laws but we are not lacking on efforts to fight piracy,” he said.

Intellectual officers still have to destroy some P2 billion worth of the imitated products from abroad that are stored in the warehouse. “Since imitations have no price, we use the price of the original products,” Sarmiento said.

Asked when the Customs IPU will acquire the shredding machine, Sarmiento replied that JICA has yet to respond on the request of BoC and release any funds for such purpose. IPU's request for the machine has been left unanswered since year 2007.

Sarmiento said JICA Representative Masahiro Kikuchi is eager to grant the BoC's request given the bureau's crusade against piracy and its efforts to implement the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines.

Once they acquire a shredding machine, other government enforcement agencies involved in the anti-piracy drive would also benefit namely National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police and the Optical Media Board.