BOC says March collection of P29.3B up by 34% from last year

Bureau of Customs. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Customs collected a total of P29.3 billion in revenues in March, which the Department of Finance-attached agency noted was P7.5 billion more than its collections for the same period in 2013.

In a statement, the BOC cited on Monday the “34 percent year-on-year hike” in revenues to the “increase in the volume of imported goods as well as the ongoing systemic and process reforms, particularly in valuation,” in the bureau.

Citing a report of the DOF’s Bureau of Treasury, it said the “revenues generated by the Bureau of Customs in March were derived mainly from cash collections, which refer to duties, taxes and fees collected from goods that entered the country through the Customs ports nationwide.”

However, the bureau did not say that last month, it incurred a collection deficit of P3.98 billion for its failure to meet its monthly collection target of P33.28 billion, bringing to P8.27 billion the agency’s total deficit during the first quarter of 2014. The BOC’s revenue goal for the first three months of the year was P94.76 billion.

The agency’s revenue goals for January and February were P31.73 billion and P30.18 billion, respectively. Its actual collections for these periods amounted to P29.78 billion and P27.41 billion.

Instead, the bureau pointed out that “for the first quarter of 2014, total collections by the BOC reached P86.5 billion, up 26 percent from the same period last year.”

“The increase was attributed to an increase in the volume of imported goods, improvement in the valuation of imported goods and a slight increase in the number of working days, which totaled 63 versus 61 in the same period last year.”

According to the BOC, “month-on-month cash collections have also improved from 19.2 percent in November 2013 to 34.4 percent in March 2014, bringing the average growth rate for the past five months to 23.24 percent, which is way above the 4.76 percent average cash collection growth rate from January to October 2013 as efficiency increased following various changes in the valuation of goods, processing of import documents and an intensified enforcement of alert orders and policies on the filing of import entries.”

The bureau also did not disclose the actual revenues of its 17 collection districts nationwide, including the Port of Manila, Manila International Container Port, Batangas port and the Subic Freeport in Zambales.

Meanwhile, Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla said “far more aggressive reforms will be implemented over the next 15 months” in the bureau.

“These include the reimposition of preshipment inspection for all formal entry cargoes, centralized assessment service and a single set of  reference values for major commodities,” he also said.

Last week, he told the Makati Business Club that they have been enforcing measures that would allow the BOC to capitalize on information technology to prevent any customs employee from committing corruption.

The bureau has also “massively” increased the amount of information disclosed to the public, which is updated and made available on its website. The information involves every import transaction from the previous month, the average valuation for every tariff heading and every country of origin for which there was a transaction over the last few months.

“We also started to compile reference values for key commodities, which account for the largest percentage of our collections. We were also approached by well-informed industry groups, which have given us data,” he said.

Earlier, the former DOF undersecretary for privatization claimed that despite the increasing BOC revenue collection deficit, the agency was “moving in the right direction,” citing what he referred to as the “sustained growth in our collections.”

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