BoC tax take falls short of goal

The Bureau of Customs (BoC) collected P20.97 billion in taxes in February, only about 82 percent of its target but 12.6 percent higher year on year.

The BoC was supposed to collect P25.67 billion last month. In February 2010, the agency’s collection hit P18.62 billion.

In a statement, Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said that the revenue shortfall last month was partly due to the monthlong celebration of the lunar new year in China, from where 70 percent of Philippine imports originate.

“We anticipated this as, historically, the BoC’s revenue collections during the months of January and February are usually low,” Biazon said.

“(I) expect the bureau’s collections to improve beginning this month as not only is the Chinese New Year business nightmare over, but also because (I have) already made the personnel organization adjustments to maximize efficiency and utilization of BoC resources,” he added.

Also last month, Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima said he was “not yet comfortable” with the revenue agencies’ goal-setting process, especially that of the BoC’s, which is currently based on macroeconomic factors.

In January, the Cabinet-level Budget Development and Coordination Committee decided to lower the BoC’s collection goal for 2012 to P347 billion from P365 billion.

The current system is spelled out in the Later Attrition Act of 2005, which puts a risk-reward scheme where customs officials get incentives if the target is exceeded but get transferred, demoted or even fired if they failed.

The law was designed with hopes of addressing the twin issues of low revenue collection performance and graft and corruption in the BoC and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

However, calls for the law’s amendment or repeal have been raised amid worries of mass layoffs, on one hand, and, on the other, manipulation of collection systems to gain bonuses.

Purisima said that to properly implement the law and to be fair to all concerned, goal-setting should be done “in an inclusive manner where you involve all those that would be affected, and the goals should be based on more hard facts.”

He said the current goal-setting system provides figures that are hard to break down by region and by district.