The stagnant containers at the Port of Manila, South Harbor, and Manila International Container Terminal may have been the cause of skyrocketing prices of agricultural products, as the Philippine Ports Authority admitted that the idle cargoes are indicative that there is hoarding of goods in the ports.

PPA general manager Jay Daniel Santiago said their hands are tied to inspect or open the cargoes stuck at the port yard facility because there is no pertinent order or law to allow them to do so.

"What can we do? These importers are paying their storage fees. Our suggestion is to increase the storage fee to the maximum so they will not let those cargoes be stuck there for more than months.

There are cargoes rotting there for 700 days," Santiago said.

He added that idle containers are just overstaying, while others are held by the Bureau of Customs and some cannot be processed because they lack permits and are un-cleared by the Bureau of Quarantine.

"It is alarming as these idle cargoes have significant numbers. It has goods inside. We do not allow hoarding, but we cannot do anything. Hoarding is the call of importers. It is not in our purview to know what is inside the container, but the Bureau of Customs," Santiago said.

The PPA chief stressed that it is the agency's perennial problem on how to address congestion of idle cargoes in Port of Manila.

"We do not know that legally, a legislature or an executive order can forfeit the cargoes. They can store the cargo as much as they want so long that they are paying the storage fee. It's not that we don't care or are helpless, except that within existing regulations and laws, we are trying to find ways to address that problem. We have been pushing Congress to legislate a measure to resolve this, but nothing proceeds," Santiago said.

He said cargo that is currently overstaying in Port of Manila is alarming, "as any cargo which exceeds a reasonable number of days is not okay because they eat a lot of space and affect efficiency."

Santiago disclosed that the current utilization of the country's port yard is at 85 percent with an average of 7,000 boxes released per day, quite high because of the influx of cargo arriving from other countries because of the Christmas season.