PAL settlement helped boost GOCC dividend contribution in 2017

State-run firms’ dividend remittances to the Bureau of the Treasury jumped by almost a tenth to P30.45 billion last year, an increase attributed by the Department of Finance to financial discipline among government-owned and -controlled corporations.

“The 2017 dividend collections actually exceeded the P27.73-billion remittances in 2016 even if Land Bank of the Philippines was exempted from paying its P6-billion dividends in 2017 to allow it to recapitalize and better serve the increasing development needs of the country,” Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said in a statement Monday.

If not for the Landbank exemption, the total dividend last year would have reached P36.45 billion, he added.

Dominguez commended the DOF’s corporate affairs group headed by Undersecretary Antonette C. Tionko for “aggressively promoting financial discipline among GOCCs. “

Tionko said 53 GOCCs contributed to the 2017 dividend collections.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), “which had not remitted dividends for the past four years, has now emerged as one of the biggest dividend contributors,” Tionko said.

“CAAP, which remitted a total of P5.39 billion to the Treasury, was able to collect nearly P6 billion from Philippine Airlines in October last year, after President Duterte ordered the Department of Transportation not to extend the deadline it had given to the flag carrier to pay its long-overdue navigational fees and other charges,” Tionko explained.

The other GOCCs that had over a billion in dividends last year were the following: The Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (P7.46 billion); the Development Bank of the Philippines (P2.51 billion); the Manila International Airport Authority (P2.22 billion); the Philippine Ports Authority (P1.95 billion); the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (P1.84 billion); the National Power Corp. (P1.39 billion); and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (P1.18 billion).