PPA remits P4.1B dividends to add to oil price surge subsidies

Philippine Ports Authority | INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has remitted P4.1 billion in dividends to the national treasury, which will be added to funds being raised to give a bigger cash aid to households deemed most vulnerable to a surge in oil prices.

Officials of the PPA, led by general manager Jay Santiago and Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade, last Monday (March 21) turned over a check for this year’s cash dividend remittance to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, the Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement on Wednesday (March 23).

The PPA’s 2022 dividends came from its net earnings last year. The DOF said that since 2018, the PPA remitted over half of its net earnings during the prior year. Under Republic Act (RA) No. 7656—the GOCC Dividend Act—all state-run corporations are mandated to declare and remit a minimum of 50 percent of their yearly incomes to the national treasury as dividends.

Citing data from the DOF’s corporate affairs group, Dominguez said cumulative dividends remitted by the PPA since the dividend law took effect in 1994 until 2016 totaled P20.5 billion. Under the Duterte administration, the PPA’s dividend remittances reached P21.5 billion. “This amount surpasses the combined dividend collections of the past administrations,” Dominguez said.

The finance chief said “the PPA’s exceptional track record under the Duterte administration is a model that other GOCCs should emulate.”

“We need all the help we can get from our state-run firms to further strengthen our fiscal position amid the external risks we are currently facing as we sustain our economic recovery,” he added.

Last Tuesday (March 22), Dominguez said the government will squeeze dividends from GOCCs to partly cover the financing requirements for the larger P500 per month (P6,000 for the entire year) instead of only P200 a month (P2,400 for the year) which President Rodrigo Duterte ordered to be given as dole outs to the lower 50-percent income households.

It will be just like during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when the national government ordered GOCCs to cough up dividends in advance so it can give away “ayuda” amid the then longest and most stringent COVID-19 lockdowns.

This time, as Vladimir Putin’s campaign to obliterate Ukraine sent global oil prices soaring and its impact spilling over locally, the rest of the funding for targeted subsidies would be sourced from excess collections of 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) being collected from now costlier fuel.

At an estimated average global oil price of $110 per barrel in 2022, the government expects to collect an additional P26 billion in VAT this year.

TSB