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JUST the other week the Department of Finance
announced that the revenue collection target for the Bureau of
Internal Revenue (BIR) has been slashed from P765.8 billion to
P741.3 billion, or a reduction of about P25 billion.
The move immediately raised
eyebrows and triggered renewed speculation over the real motive
behind this decision by Finance Secretary Gary Teves. There are
three reasons for the raised eyebrows.
The first has to do with
President Arroyo’s infrastructure commitments made during her
State of the Nation address (SONA). The accelerated development of
her “superregions” requires trillions of pesos.
The timing of her stepped up
infrastructure program combined with Teves’s reduction of BIR
collection goals immediately raises the question: Where will the
government get the money to fund its ambitious goal? The spending
spree can go with a borrowing binge but that would contradict the
administration’s current fiscal and deficit objectives.
The second has to do with
Teves’s unceremonious axing of the highly respected former BIR
Commissioner Jose Mario Buñag. To this day the move is still
causing much confusion as to whether or not the government values
good public servants. Buñag is one of those rare individuals who
ventured into government service out of a desire to serve the nation
after making his mark as one of the country’s top tax lawyers in
the private sector.
As BIR commissioner, Buñag
managed to remain untainted by controversy. He whipped his agency
into shape as a team obsessed with raising revenue collection
levels. He achieved this rare feat in 2006, a milestone in the
history of government revenue generation.
In fact, the feat was one of the
highlights in pre-SONA newspaper ads where the government trumpeted
its 2006 “Balanced Budget,” highlighting the record collection
of the BIR in 2006 and the fact that the record overshadowed the
BIR’s own 2005 collection level. Buñag was BIR commissioner when
this feat was achieved.
In view of the jubilation over
the BIR’s 2006 performance, observers were perplexed when Teves
began berating the agency early this year over what he called
collection shortfalls. They recall that Buñag had urged a
“downward adjustment” of the 2007 targets since the original
goal was about 30 to 40 percent more than the 2006 target. Besides,
the BIR was being made to reach it without additional budgets,
manpower or technology support.
Teves rejected Buñag’s
recommendation to lower 2007 targets. Instead, he fired the BIR
chief.
With Buñag out of his hair,
Teves then turned around and lowered the BIR targets. What gives?
The move raises a further
question: Are BIR targets merely whimsical and arbitrary? The
sequence of events tends to show that Teves had merely set Buñag up
for a disgraceful departure. He raised the revenue goal to
impossible heights, rejected a Buñag plea to lower it to reasonable
levels, then axed Buñag. And then he lowered the target.
Now that he has finally gotten
rid of, Teves now has to make do with less revenue. Where’s the
financial wisdom and logic in that? Was the government’s revenue
collection program caught in the crossfire of personal animosity?
Now comes the third reason for
raised eyebrows. Teves named Lilian Hefti, Buñag’s erstwhile
deputy, as the axed commissioner’s successor. Again, looking for
the logic behind the decision to appoint her is like looking for the
proverbial needle in a haystack. As a key member of Buñag’s team,
wasn’t Hefti partly responsible for the agency’s “underperformance,”
which supposedly drew Teves’s ire?
By naming Hefti as Buñag’s
successor, isn’t Teves merely perpetuating the infirmity her
erstwhile boss and predecessor caused at the BIR?
The view is that Teves’s
decision to reduce the BIR’s collection targets was grossly unfair
to both Buñag and the government. It is also unfair to Hefti.
Are the lowered targets evidence
of Teves’s lack of confidence that she can match her
predecessor’s performance?
Hefti has little reason to worry,
however. It could be that Teves is all set to applaud her collection
since she is expected to hit a much lower goal. Then, Teves would be
able to tell all and sundry that BIR hit its target after he axed Buñag.
If this whole affair is unfair to
Hefti, it may be because she—like the revenue collection
program—may have been merely caught in the crossfire of personal
animosity. In the future, a way should be found to prevent
government revenue collections from being held hostage by a single
official’s pet peeves.
Statesmen who can rise above
personal motives, indeed, are hard to come by these days. They just
kicked one out on the excuse of collection shortfalls.
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