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Tuesday, September 14, 2004
‘Easy’ to raise P20M from quarry taxes: vice guv
By Dante M. Fabian
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Pampanga Vice Gov. Joseller "Yeng" Guiao announced Monday that Gov. Mark T. Lapid can easily achieve his promise to significantly increase the present P8 million annual quarry tax collections to P20 million within a period of 100 days.
Guiao said this as he confirmed that Lapid had agreed to take steps to increase the quarry tax collections from the present P8 million to P20 million annually in 100 days.
He said that Lapid acceded to the Provincial Board (PB) members' insistence to raise the quarry collections of the Provincial Treasury. Lapid, however, asked the PB members to allow him 100 days within which to fully implement the necessary measures to achieve the P20 million target from quarry taxes.
Guiao said Lapid declared this during their meeting with the PB members at the Fortune Restaurant last Friday.
Guiao expressed satisfaction with Lapid's commitment for the time being, although he said the Provincial Government can make much more than P20 million from quarry revenues.
"We believe we can make more than P20 million," he said.
According to Guiao, as per its 2004 annual budget, the Provincial Government needs to implement measures to fill up a gap of P14 million in the next three and a half months.
Gov asked to be given 100 days within which to start enforcement of the necessary steps in pulling up the quarry tax collections to the P20 million per year level.
Citing reports from the provincial finance officials, Guiao said the provincial treasury collected about P1,100,000 in July and P1,300,000 in August.
These figures, he said, show that on the average, the provincial treasury collects the P300 per truckload quarry taxes from only 300 trucks daily.
Guiao said that data from the National Resources and Development Corporation (NRDC) showed that there are about 3,000 to 5,000 trucks hauling sand from Pampanga daily.
In addition to the executive actions, Guiao expressed his desire to pursue other means to increase the quarry revenues.
Guiao has earlier proposed a tie-up between the Provincial Government and the Manila North Tollways Corporation (MNTC) in using the latter's closed circuit video monitoring system along the North Luzon Expressway (Nlex) in establishing the actual number of trucks hauling lahar, sand and gravel from quarry sites in the province's municipalities.
He said preliminary discussions regarding the proposal have been held with MNTC President Jose "Ping" De Jesus who expressed his agreement to help in monitoring the quarry trucks in order to help in raising the province's revenue collection.
Guiao said at present, there is no system that will provide accurate information to verify and reconcile the conflicting data on the actual number of sand-hauling trucks presented to the SP by the executive officials.
He expressed hope that a memorandum of cooperation with MNTC, as a disinterested third party, will provide the mechanism to resolve the issue on the number of trucks extracting mineral such as sand and lahar from the province.
Sources said Lapid, Guiao and PB members discussed the implementation of a better monitoring system of quarry activities to double quarry collection level set at P20 million by December.
The increase in quarry taxes is reportedly one of the options viewed by the legislative that will make Lapid meet or even surpass the P620 million-budget for the operations, projects and programs of the provincial government this year.
Present at the meeting were Provincial Administrator Fidel Arcenas, 1st District PB Members Tarsicio DC Halili and Prospero Lagman, 2nd District PB Members Liberty Lim and Eddie Chu.
Other provincial legislators in the meeting were 3rd District PB Members Ceferino "Pinong" Laus Aurelio "Dong" Gonzalez, Jr., and Johnny "JQ" Quiambao, and 4th district PB Members Nestor O. Tolentino and Nelson Calara.
Only one ex-officio member, Ramon Changcoco, Pampanga Councilors' League president, attended the meeting.
The move to increase the collections of the Provincial Treasury from quarry taxes and fees was reportedly initiated by fourth district board member Tolentino, PB committee on ways and means chairman.
In letters to Provincial Assessor Arturo A. Dayrit and Fernando Y. Henson, Provincial Planning and Development Coordinator (PPDC) dated July 20, 2004, Tolentino said that it has been observed that the provincial income has not increased significantly for the past years.
"Our committee, being tasked to find ways and means to augment our income, is now in the process of planning such measures," Tolentino said as he asked Dayrit to provide the SP with his own fiscal analysis of the present revenue collection system.
Tolentino also asked Dayrit and Henson to submit their respective recommendations on possible ways to improve the present system for consideration of the PB.
(September 14, 2004 issue)
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