Growth in Customs revenues slows to 6.6%

The import duties and other taxes collected by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) grew 6.6 percent year-on-year to P92.2 billion during the first quarter, albeit a slower growth rate compared with the double-digit rise posted last year due to cheaper oil.

While the first-quarter take exceeded the P87.3 billion in collections during the first three months of 2014, it was below the P103.3-billion target for the January-to-March 2015 period.

In a briefing Monday, Customs Commissioner John Phillip P. Sevilla attributed the slower collections growth during the first quarter to lower cost of crude oil, noting that prices declined by 53 percent compared with the first quarter of last year.

According to Sevilla, oil import volumes actually increased by 19.5 percent to 4.97 billion kilos during the January-to-March period. However, the drastic drop in prices was coupled with “shifts in the import mix toward higher crude oil imports at the expense of higher-value finished products,” bringing the importation value of oil down by 43.6 percent year-on-year to P95.4 billion during the first three months.

As such, collections from imported oil dropped by 38.1 percent to P14.9 billion during the first quarter from P24.1 billion a year ago, Sevilla said.

According to the Customs chief, the “realistic” collections target for 2015 should have been P373 billion, much lower than the adjusted goal of P436.5 billion set by the interagency, Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee or DBCC this month. The original 2015 target for the BOC was P456.4 billion, which was cut to reflect about P20 billion in foregone revenues expected as a result of cheaper global oil prices.