BOC misses 2011 goal by P56.15B

MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Customs (BOC), the government’s second largest revenue agency, missed its 2011 collection goal but Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon vowed to make up for the agency’s dismal performance this year.

He blamed anemic trade in December as the culprit for the revenue shortfall last year but ranking officials and Customs insiders told The STAR that collections from September to December are historically the highest compared to revenues generated the rest of the year. “December is really the lean season,” Biazon said.

However, a ranking Customs official said: “On the contrary, December is usually the strongest month.”

Another Customs insider said that the “ber” months are traditionally the best months for the agency.

Biazon said the bureau collected P263.85 billion last year or a shortfall of P56.15 billion compared to the official target of P320 billion.

Biazon, in his announcement, referred to the P276.42 billion as the target but according to the interagency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC), the P276.42 billion is only an outlook and not a revised target.

Thus, Biazon said compared to P276.42 billion, the shortfall of the BOC for 2011 is only P12.57 billion.

However, the DBCC, co-chaired by Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima and Budget and Management Florencio Abad, said the 2011 targets of both Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) have not changed at P320 billion and P940 billion, respectively.

In 2011, the BOC had cash collections of P263.85 billion from 2010’s cash collections of P227.50 billion.

 “On a year-on-year comparison, September collection was up 15 percent, October up by 20.8 percent, November up by 23.5 percent and December up by 1.1 percent. December is really the lean season,” Biazon said.

Nevertheless, Biazon said he would step up the agency’s fight against smuggling. He said the Run After the Smugglers (RATS) program of the BOC would continue to file cases against smugglers as well as Customs insiders and brokers conniving with them.

He also said RATS would try to file bigger cases this year.