Monday, November 12, 2007 Mongaya: Marina Mall By Anol Mongaya Panahom
UNTIL the court decides with finality on the Marina Mall controversy, expect Lapu-Lapu City Hall to continue seeking ways of collecting taxes from the mall management and mall tenants.
In fairness to Mayor Boy Radaza, efforts to collect taxes from the mall and other non-export related firms inside the Mactan Export Zone had been going on for years now away from the glare of publicity.
A walk through the mall shows us the kind of tenants and products they’re selling. One has to stretch one’s imagination to believe that these are export-oriented or export overruns. The city government definitely wants to collect business taxes from these establishments.
Unfortunately for Mayor Radaza, local media attention only came with the complaint filed at the Office of the Visayas Ombudsman by Marina Mall’s Efrain Pelaez.
Thus, the public perceives the tax collection efforts as retaliation. Every “straight news” story about the controversy always says the closure of the mall is “seen” as “harassment.”
A friend, I was told, advised the mayor’s camp not to go after the Marina Mall at this time. Radaza’s lawyers, however, think otherwise.
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With top officials of the Bureau of Customs and the Land Transportation Office (LTO) carrying out an amnesty on vehicles with deficient papers to address the issue of smuggling, non-customs enforcement agencies should be prudent enough to stay away from smuggling operations for the mean time.
However, the local port is rife with talks on the activities of a police officer who succeeded in convincing the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) into going after alleged Korean smugglers.
I have high regards for the NBI. They should, however, stay away from the murky waters at the ports or they get muddied too. According to the port grapevine, a go-between first relayed P1.4 million for last week’s raid to be resolved quietly.
But under the amnesty worked out by the BOC and the LTO, the Koreans will only pay the government some P200,000 or even less to remedy the deficiencies of the documents of the seized vehicles.
I think congressmen should tread carefully in their efforts to weed out car smuggling. The figures being bandied about by car dealers are bloated. Local LTO figures showed that most of the newly registered vehicles are multicabs and trucks, not luxury vehicles as alleged. The solons should also ask traffic police authorities for records of carnapped vehicles from other regions that found their way for registration in Cebu.
On the other hand, I think a congressional inquiry into alleged car smuggling should be welcome if it could be a venue for local multicab assemblers to present their case and gain full legitimacy. As of the moment, many assemblers don’t qualify under the stringent rules of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). But this is a large industry in Cebu. Even congressmen and local governments buy or rent their multicabs from these assemblers.
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Though they still need to fight for it in court, residents who get their water from private wells need not pay the Metro Cebu Water District anything because of a landmark case recently decided in Cebu. Lawyer Ronald Bacquiano won a case in behalf of a residents association that relied on a private well for their water. The water firm reportedly did not appeal to a higher court for fear that the lower court’s ruling might become a general rule covering everybody.
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