Deputy collectors, section chiefs of PH ports short of collection targets face relief

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Philippine Customs commissioner Isidro Lapeña will relieve deputy collectors and section chiefs of ports that failed to meet their January revenue collection target.

“I cannot put at stake another month for another experiment. Let my directive be clear: relieve the section chiefs and deputy collectors of [collection districts] who did not reach the target,” Lapeña told Bureau of Customs (BOC) officials during the agency’s flag raising ceremony on February 12.

In a follow-up statement, Lapeña said the relief will take effect in March after the collection period in February.

“Since I have just assigned some new collectors this January, we will base the relief on their February collection performance,” he explained.

The customs chief last month said he will issue a memorandum directing all district collectors, deputy collectors for assessment, chiefs of Formal Entry Division (FED), and examiners “to be responsible for the achievement of the targets assigned to them” as it will be the basis of whether they stay or not in their posts.

In a memorandum dated February 6, Lapeña directed all district collectors, deputy collectors for assessment, FED chiefs, and all others concerned, to intensify their collection performance and hit their collection targets for the month of February.

He also reminded BOC officials that their revenue collection will be the basis for relief of district collectors, deputy collectors for assessment, FED chiefs, and all other officers performing assessment functions.

Lapeña had earlier said that the 2018 revenue collection target of BOC is achievable, as long as customs officials “do things right” by collecting the correct value of goods and stop from benchmarking.

He explained that the basis for each district’s collection target is a two-year historical data on the goods, commodities, and volumes handled by each port, making the distribution of collection targets “relatively accurate, or if not, an accurate basis [of] computation.”

The BOC chief said this, therefore, makes the collection targets realistic and doable, as long as correct valuation of goods is imposed.

BOC said preliminary reports from its Financial Service showed the bureau collected P40.798 billion in January 2018, 12% short of the P46.394 billion target for the month.

Of the 17 BOC collection districts, 12 exceeded their January 2018 targets:

  • Port of San Fernando which collected P256 million (0.7% above its target of P254 million)
  • Port of Legazpi, P24 million (9.8% above its target of P22 million)
  • Port of Iloilo, P270 million (7.4% above its target of P251 million)
  • Port of Cebu, P2.271 billion (8.6% above its target of P2.091 billion)
  • Port of Tacloban, P34 million (59.9% above its target of P21 million)
  • Port of Surigao, P4 million (261.9% above its target of P1 million)
  • Port of Cagayan de Oro, P1.616 billion (23.3% above its target of P1.310 billion)
  • Port of Davao, P1.785 billion (19.9% above its target of P1.489 billion)
  • Port of Subic, P1.683 billion (0.8% above its target of P1.670 billion)
  • Port of Clark, P135 million (10.7% above its target of P122 million)
  • Port of Aparri, P5.6 million (39.5% above its target of P4 million)
  • Port of Limay, P2.839 billion (0.6% above its target of P2.823 billion)

The ports that were not able to hit their targets include Manila International Container Port, Port of Manila, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Batangas, and Zamboanga.

Despite falling short of the January’s target, Lapeña is still optimistic that BOC will reach the 2018 collection target of P598 billion.