MANILA: Manila ports continue to fail hitting revenue targets by P44.13 billion ($989.28 million), while seven ports outside the Philippine capital surpassed revenue collection targets by P13.96 billion ($312.95 million)* for the first 11 months of this year, data from the Bureau of Customs (BOC) showed.
The ports of Subic, Batangas, Aparri, Iloilo, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, and Davao had a combined target of P104.045 billion ($2.33 billion) for January to November this year, exceeding goals with consolidated collections at P118 billion ($2.65 billion).
Subic collected the most taxes than its programmed collections at P14.12 billion ($316.59 million). The amount is P6.2 billion ($139.01 million) higher than its P7.92 billion ($177.59 million) goal in the same period.
The port of Batangas came next, with collections at P74.13 billion ($1.66 billion), P5.05 billion ($113.23 million) higher than its P69.08 billion ($1.55 billion) target.
Both ports have been tapped to serve as alternative harbor for shipments instead of the Manila ports which suffered bottlenecks aggravated by a local government truck ban in February.
Total collections across all ports reached P331.171 billion ($7.43 billion), up by 17.8% year-on-year, according to the BOC.
“Revenue collections by the Bureau of Customs continued to grow at double-digit levels even as the price of imported petroleum products tempered in November,” the BOC said in a statement Monday, December 22.
But overall, the BOC failed to hit its total revenue collections in the said period. Based on our computations, the Bureau missed its collection target by P44.13 billion ($989.53 million).
The rest of the ports collected only P213.97 billion ($4.98 billion) as against what the BOC programmed them to collect at P282.05 billion ($6.32 billion) in the first 11 months of this year.
Underperformance and alleged corruption at the BOC earned the President’s ire in 2013. Since then, the agency has undergone reforms, with several Customs officials leaving their posts.
