BOC tax take down 8.5% in April

Bureau of Customs. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Import duties and other taxes collected by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) last April slid by 8.5 percent to P28.1 billion, as the take from imported oil fell by more than half year-on-year.

Data released Wednesday showed that the BOC’s revenues at the start of the second quarter went down from P30.8 billion in April last year despite a hike in collections from non-oil imports. The actual April revenues were also a fourth below the P37.4-billion target for the month.

BOC data showed that duties and taxes from non-oil imports rose 5 percent last April to P22.7 billion alongside a 12-percent increase in import volume to 4.6 million kilograms.

However, collections from crude and oil products combined skidded by a hefty 40.5 percent year-on-year to P5.4 billion last April from P9.1 billion a year ago.

The share of oil revenues to total BOC collections hence dropped to 19 percent in April from 30 percent in the same month last year.

The decline in revenues from oil imports came even as volumes increased by 6.7 percent to 1.8 million kilograms last April. The BOC computed the slide in oil prices that month was 44.6-percent lower than a year ago.

Despite lower collections in April, the total take during the first four months was up 2.7 percent to P120.4 billion from the P117.3 billion collected in same four-month period of 2014.

The end-April actual collections, however, were 14.4 percent below the P140.7-billion goal for the period.

Collections from non-oil goods grew by a 19.1 percent to almost P100 million at end-April, but those from imported oil declined by 38.7 percent to P20.4 billion.

The average price of oil per kilogram between January and April was 50.6-percent below prices in the previous year.

Customs Commissioner Alberto D. Lina had said that a viable intervention to arrest the slower growth of the BOC’s collections to date is to jack up the excise tax on petroleum products, which has stayed low since the 1990s.

Under the BOC’s adjusted quarterly targets, it should collect P106.9 billion in duties and taxes during the second quarter; almost P112 billion in the third quarter; and the highest three-month goal of P125.5 billion during the fourth quarter, in order to hit the P436.6-billion collections target for the entire year.