THE target revenue collections in the Bureau of Customs Port of Davao (BOC-Davao) in 2019 was three percent lower than its target collection for the year due to port accidents and operation regulations imposed on some of its major clients.
Based on the data from the BOC-Davao, the port has only collected about P27 billion last year compared to its P29 billion collection target.
BOC-Davao district collector Erastus Sandino Austria said the port failed to at least achieve its target because one of the port’s primary importers hit its own berthing facility in June.
“Dili maka-berth and ilang vessels for a while for them to be able to discharge oil (Their vessels were not able to berth for a while),” he said.
He said the berthing facility was a shared facility of three major oil companies.
“Because of that incident, we were not able to collect about P300 to P400 million in duties and in taxes every month,” he added.
Austria also bared the local government of the Municipality of Sta. Cruz temporarily suspended the operation of the Seaoil depot due to alleged violation of environmental laws and standards.
“Seaoil traditionally has been the number one or two taxpayer of the Port of Davao. That is another 300 plus million that we were unable to collect every month so the result in 2019 is that our collection performance vis-a-vis the target is almost 98 percent,” he said.
However, the 2019 revenue collection of the agency was 4 percent higher than the collection in 2018 which reached P26 billion.
The record of the agency further revealed that revenue collections in the Bureau of Customs Port of Davao (BOC-Davao) continued to increase in the last four years.
Based on the data from BOC-Davao, the port collection has spiked by 38 percent to P16 billion in 2017 from P11 billion in 2016. In 2018, about P26 billion was collected by BOC-Davao or a 62 percent increase from its previous year.
Austria is also anticipating a major drop in the port’s collection performance in the succeeding months given the current economic situation caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (Covid-19).
“For March and the subsequent months, it remains to be seen how this will really impact us in quantifiable terms. The fact is that it has a negative impact but on how much, we cannot say yet because it is market-driven. Hopefully, it will normalize soon,” he said.