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THE Bureau of Customs failed to meet its monthly goal in February
despite the outstanding “performance” shown by nine of the 15
ports throughout the country.
Preliminary district reports released on Tuesday
have indicated that despite the positive performance of the nine
ports in the previous month, the BoC managed to collect only P15.582
billion, lower by P0.94 billion than its target of P16.521 billion
for February.
But year on year, BoC’s collection last month
was P2.159 billion more than last year’s February output,
translating to 16.1-percent positive efficiency.
BoC Commissioner Napoleon Morales said the
shortfall in the bureau’s monthly goal could be attributed to
unmet assumptions.
“We were actually expecting Petron to pay P2
billion, but they only paid P1 billion. That had a big impact on our
collections,” Morales said.
Oil companies usually pay for oil imports during
the final days of the month as part of their privileges to file
import entries within 30 days upon importation.
Another factor that affected the bureau’s
performance in meeting its target was that no tax expenditure fund (TEF)
was collected for the previous month.
The TEF or non-cash payment is the mode used to
pay for government importations of rice, equipment and other
products.
Payments for these are usually made through the
Special Allotment Release Order from the budget department and are
usually deferred.
The six ports that failed to meet their target
are the major ports of Manila, the Manila International Container
Port and Batangas as well as the smaller ports in Tacloban, Surigao
and Subic.
The ports that met their collection targets are
those in San Fernando (P108 million); NAIA (P1.189 billion); Legaspi
(P3.7 million); Iloilo (P46 million); Cebu (P387 million); Cagayan
de Oro (P90 million); Zamboanga (P3.5 million); Davao (P123 million)
and Clark (P55 million).
-- Anthony Vargas
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