MANILA—The Manila International Container Port, the Port of Manila and the Ninoy Aquino International Airport have a few things in common.
For one, the customs offices at the three ports are among the Bureau of Customs’ poor performers with a collective deficit of P6.9 billion in their collections for the first four months of the year.
The heads of the three collection districts, tagged by bureau insiders as the “Three Kings” apparently because of their connections, were among those excluded from the bureau’s first major revamp early this year.
Ricardo Belmonte, who heads the customs office at the MICP, is a younger brother of House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte; Roger Gatchalian, who heads customs office at the Port of Manila, and Carlos So, who heads the NAIA customs office, are said to be backed by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and the Iglesia ni Cristo, respectively.
The MICP, POM and NAIA were also among the 10 BOC collection districts that failed to meet their revenue targets in 2012.
A BOC collection report, a copy of which was furnished to the Inquirer, showed that the MICP raised a total of P24.4 billion from January to April this year. However, the amount was P3.45 billion short of its four-month target of P27.9 billion.
The Port of Manila also did not fare well. Its collections for the same period totalled only P18.4 billion, P3.07 billion less than its goal of P21.5 billion.
The NAIA collection district registered revenues of P7.92 billion compared with a target of P8.31 billion, or a deficit of nearly P390 million.
In April, the BOC raised a total of P27.5 billion, bringing to P103.08 billion the agency’s collections during the first four months of the year.
While last month’s revenues were P2.2 billion higher than the P25.3 billion collection in April 2012, they were P1.78 billion short of the bureau’s target of P29.3 billion for April this year.
The Customs report also disclosed that last month, only eight of the agency’s 17 collection districts met their revenue targets. They were the Subic Freeport, Clark International Airport, Iloilo, Legazpi, Surigao, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and Limay, Bataan.
The Subic port’s collections totaled P1.09 billion, P562 million more than its target of P530 million.
Last week, Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon made a surprise visit to the freeport to personally congratulate District Collector Adelina Molina for the port’s “outstanding collection performance.” He expressed hope his visit to Subic would “motivate the Subic port personnel to further improve the district’s revenue collection drive.”
Clark collected P242 million against its target of P71 million, a surplus of P171 million, while Cagayan de Oro’s revenues amounted to P457 million, or P10 million more than its target of P447 million.
With collections of P92 million, Iloilo surpassed its monthly target of P71 million, while Legazpi registered revenues of P24 million, P8 million more than its target of P16 million.
The Surigao port’s revenues totaled P21 million compared with its target of P4.5 million.
With collections of P498 million, Davao surpassed its target of P493 million by nearly P5 million, while Limay collected a total of P3.69 billion compared with its target of P3.53 billion, or a surplus of P160 million.
Meanwhile, Biazon said “the evaluation of our port personnel’s revenue collection performance will be included in the assessment of who will be moved in the next round of Customs reshuffle.”
The former Muntinlupa City legislator claimed that “the movement of officials to assignments where they would be most effective is paying off.”
“We may have found the right chemistry among our officials to enable us to meet our collection target for 2013 although it remains to be seen as we progress through the year,” he said, adding he would “not hesitate to undertake more rounds of reconfigurations should I find it necessary to ensure our meeting our collection target this year” of P340 billion.