City treasurer confident it can hit P3.5B 2019 target

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City Treasurer’s Office is confident it will reach its P3.5-billion target from all taxes for calendar year 2019.

Acting City Treasurer Veronica Morelos said the office has already collected P2.5 billion as of September this year, which is closer to this year’s P3.1 billion target collection.

“Ma-reach ang target kay mag-collection effort man ta. Maghimo man ta og collection strategies, massive intensification of collection of taxes,” she said.

Morelos said the office has examined the books and accounts and inspected the business establishments that pay and do not pay business taxes this year.

Aside from that, she said the office also exerted effort in going after delinquent real property owners.

“We are confident that we can reach that because our City Assessor’s Office has acted on the re-evaluation. We also started sending tax delinquencies and we have positive response,” she added.

During yesterday’s budget hearing, members of the city’s Local Finance Committee and offices under the Office of the mayor defended their proposed budget under the P8.1 billion Annual Budget for 2019.

Councilors Margarita Osmeña, Sisinio Andales, Eugenio Gabuya, Jr., and Alvin Arcilla attended yesterday’s budget hearing.

Andales asked Morelos on the efforts of the executive office in the increase of tax collection.

Morelos said the increase is due to the cleansing of the real property tax as some delinquent owners paid their dues to the city government.

She, however, could not state the total amount of tax collected from tax delinquencies.

Bulk of the sources of fund is from the P3.5 billion target tax revenue followed by P1.9 billion from Internal Revenue Allotment, P1.1 billion non-tax revenue, P1 billion from Joint Venture between the Filinvest Land Inc., and P250 million city’s share from Ecozone.

Morelos said the P1 billion is given by FLI to the city government every five years.

It was in 2009 when the city government entered an agreement with FLI on the 40-hectare property at South Road Properties.

The first P1-billion payment from FLI was in 2014. Next year’s payment is the second due of FLI in compliance with the JVA with the city government. (FREEMAN)