P1 trillion target

Despite rising prices of imported refined oil products such as gasoline and diesel, along with all other basic goods and services produced here and abroad, our country’s consumption-led economy apparently is not doing bad at all. Thus, we can have a collective sigh of relief even while the inflation rate averaged at 7.7 percent in October based from the monthly monitoring of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

In fact, the PSA reported yesterday the performance of the Philippine economy showed our gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter this year grew by 7.6 percent. This was largely contributed by 5.9 percent household consumption expenditures.

As measured in terms of inflation rate, the PSA calculated the purchasing power of P1 is equivalent to just 87 centavos. What can you buy out of 87 centavos? The faster rise of prices of basic goods and services outpaces the income growth of Filipino consumers.

The bulk of stiff price hikes notably come from imported refined crude oil products that in turn impinge upon transport costs of people and goods. It has also pushed up production costs of consumer goods and raw materials, the bulk of which were being imported from other countries. Coupled by the peso-dollar exchange rate that nearly breached P60 to $1 a few weeks ago. Thankfully, monetary interventions – through raising interest rates – propped up the Philippine peso that has lately recovered and now range at P57 to $1.

While groaning, we try to cope with the economic difficulties caused by the continuing price increases of foods, other basic goods as well as manufactured consumer products. But the irony is that major revenue raisers of the government, like the Bureau of Customs, reportedly still are able to collect duties and tariffs, even much higher than their set target performance.

Arnold dela Torre Jr., official spokesman and the chief of the Operations Office of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) told us last Wednesday during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay that the revenue collections of the agency as of end of October have reached P721 billion compared to the target of P700 billion for this period. Given this trend of increase, Dela Torre echoed the confidence of the Bureau to attain surplus on its annual revenue collections more than the target amounts for the entire year.

Arguably, however, large chunks of the robust revenue collections this year of the Customs Bureau came from importations of rice and sugar. A total of 278.49 metric tons (M/T) of imported refined sugar processed by the agency generated P1.9 billion in revenues for the Customs Bureau. An aggregate volume of 3.25 million M/T of imported rice came in and generated P19.42 billion in revenues for the Customs Bureau. Dela Torre explained this offset the large decrease in volumes of imported refined oil products at higher prices in the past months following the Ukraine-Russia war.

Dela Torre credited though the much improved revenue collections of the Bureau under the present leadership of “acting” Customs commissioner Yogi Filemon Ruiz. Personally picked by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM), Ruiz took over the helm of the BOC, one of the two major revenue-collecting agencies of the Department of Finance. The other is the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Prior to being a Commissioner, Ruiz served as the Enforcement and Security Services of the Bureau which is in charge of the Customs Police since 2017. Unlike his predecessors, Ruiz is not a retired police or military officer.

Previously, Ruiz was the regional director for Central Visayas of the Philippine Drugs Enforcement Agency (PDEA) where he served as a civilian agent for seven years.

The Customs Bureau has been the favorite post-retirement office for many past retired military and police Generals appointed to this agency. They were supposedly experts in security and protection measures as primary background to qualify as head of this border control agency of the government. Ruiz took over from retired Army Gen. Rey Leonardo Guerrero who was named as Customs chief in 2018.

Dela Torre himself has a humble beginning. He first started as a messenger at BOC while he was a working student. He rose through the ranks at Aduana in the past 24 years and currently holds a career post at the Bureau before he was designated as concurrent official Customs spokesman.

A certified career foreign service officer, Dela Torre cited, Ruiz capitalized his skills on diplomacy to link up international intelligence communities in cross-borders interdiction of illegal drugs and smuggling of other highly dutiable contrabands.

Dela Torre credited Ruiz for applying his years of experience at PDEA running after illegal drugs shipments all around the country and went after smugglers as ESS chief of the BOC. Dela Torre further noted Ruiz fully applied the tools and equipment of modern technology in clamping down smuggling and other nefarious illegal activities that drain government coffers from much needed revenues.

He specifically cited the computerization and digitalization programs at the Customs Bureau. Through automated processing of documents, all transactions at the Bureau have been “paperless,” he cited. More significantly, he stressed, all transactions are now “cashless” and done through online payment of duties and other fees that are automatically remitted to the Bureau of Treasury.

To date, according to him, the Customs Bureau is now 91 percent automated.

Less human intervention results to cutting bureaucratic red tape and transactions become more transparent. Thus, corruption is minimized, if not totally eradicated. But more importantly, revenue leakages are plugged. The Bureau is notoriously tagged as among agencies in the government that are prone to graft.

“But Commissioner Yogi is not stopping at surplus revenue collections and we might even reach the P1-trillion mark,” the Customs spokesman added.

It is still a work in progress though at the Customs Bureau to achieve this P1-trillion revenue collection target.