Fuel smugglers have Cambodia over a barrel
Tue Sep 20, 2005
By Ek Madra
PHOUM KOMPONG, Cambodia (Reuters) - As night falls over the watery wastes of the Cambodia-Vietnam border, the gasoline people start their day.
Rainy season floods give the Mekong Delta smugglers myriad routes through the rice fields where 35 years ago North Vietnamese communist guerrillas battled U.S. soldiers guarding the gateways to Ho Chi Minh City -- what was then Saigon.
Soaring international crude oil prices, which have pushed up pump prices in impoverished Cambodia, have made an industry out of smuggling from Vietnam, where state subsidies hold increases in check.
"If the customs men block off one way, we just go another way," said 35-year-old Yen, dragging a plastic barrel of gasoline off a rowing boat near Phoum Kompong, a waterlogged village around 45 miles southeast of Phnom Penh.
Around her in the gloom are scores of other wooden boats, many of which will be loaded with gasoline and diesel from the southern Vietnamese province of Chau Doc and destined for Cambodia, which has to import nearly all its energy.
After docking as much as 12 miles inside Cambodia, the boats are met by scores of pony carts -- an increasingly popular distribution network given the sharply escalating cost of running a vehicle.
With scant resources at its disposal -- and endemic corruption in its ranks -- the government of the Southeast Asian nation, still recovering from the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s, is powerless to resist.
"I am not really a smuggler," said 43-year-old pony cart driver Pou Rin, sitting under a coconut tree waiting for his first run of the evening. "I'm just hired to do this."
With a flick of the whip, man and beast disappear off into the darkness down the potholed track, the jangling bells around his pony's neck shamelessly advertising their activities.
"JUST DO THE MATHS"
Paid $1 to transport as much as 660 pounds of gasoline -- a run they can repeat up to five times a night -- the pony carters are making big money in a country where around one third of the 13 million population lives on less than $1 per day.
"My horse is my bread winner," said another carter, puffing on a cigarette in the darkness.
Furthermore, customs officials believe the widening margins in gasoline prices between the two countries in the past 18 months have fueled a major increase in activity in a region where cross-border contraband has been a way of life for years.
Last month, the price of one quart of high-octane "Super" gasoline in Phnom Penh rose from $0.82 to $0.92, whereas in Vietnam, it costs 10,000 dong -- despite three price rises already this year.
Smuggled gasoline, therefore, which is sold throughout the country from barrels at road-side kiosks or informal filling stations, can be priced at a hefty mark-up to Vietnam but an equally hefty discount to its legitimate equivalent.
For locals, it is madness not to get involved.
"If I didn't do this, I don't know what I'd do," said 40-year-old Ry Sok Reang, sitting on a roadside gazing out at the flooded rice fields waiting for her next shipment to come in.
There are no estimates of the size of the gasoline smuggling industry, but the Finance Ministry says 2.5 million tons of petroleum products have been confiscated since 2004.
Compare that to Cambodia's annual official fuel imports of 1 million tons, according to the National Petroleum Authority, and it is clear that smuggling is a major industry.
FUELING VIOLENCE
The larger the amount of money tied up in smuggling, the more violent it is becoming, police and customs officials fear.
Besides regular clashes reported between smuggling gangs and customs officials, several people have been killed in car crashes as vehicles try to evade capture.
According to Kung Samrech, a customs official, the smugglers are sophisticated enough to use mobile phones to tip each other off about patrols. If cornered, they are also prepared to fight.
"It is very difficult to stop them. They use knives, sticks and machetes to attack us," he said.
Other customs officers complain of being overstretched and no match for the organized criminal ranks arrayed against them.
"We can't be everywhere all the time," said customs patrolman Yim Pheang, carrying an AK-47 and life jacket. "When we patrol the delta they disappear. When we go back to the office, they come out again."
Besides the occasional loss of life, not to mention the loss to the Cambodian tax department, the smuggling also threatens the delicate ecology of the lower Mekong, often described as the "rice bowl of Vietnam."
Gasoline and diesel is often sealed inside giant plastic drums to be dragged underwater to avoid detection, but the oil slicks on the surface of many waterways and the stench of gasoline fumes across the delta suggest much of it is leaking out.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.