The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has collected P630.571 billion in revenue in 2019, or 6.3% higher than the P593 billion earned in 2018 but 6.9% lower than the P677-billion target for the year.
The 2019 revenue collection is net of the P638.979-billion collection after deducting the tax refund worth P8.687 billion, BOC assistant commissioner and spokesperson Atty. Vincent Philip Maronilla said in a media presentation on January 10.
Aside from the efforts of collection districts, Maronilla said contributors to the 2019 revenue collection were revenues collected from issued alert orders amounting to more than P40.9 million, post-clearance audits worth more than P2 billion, and P527.957 billion from public auctions.
The BOC executive explained that the bureau did not hit its annual target as some macroeconomic assumptions, upon which the assigned target was based, were not achieved.
Maronilla said cargo volumes were down last year, and the Philippine peso was stronger than the US dollar.
Moreover, the implementation of the fuel marking program, which was supposed to contribute an additional P10 billion to the target, was moved to February 2020.
“Looking at the overall performance of the bureau and looking at how these macroeconomic assumptions actually played out at the end of the year, I think we did well in the aspect of collection performance,” Maronilla said.
Customs commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero last November 2019 said while the agency did not expect to meet the 2019 revenue collection target, he was confident it would surpass the 2018 collection.
For 2020, Guerrero said BOC is tasked to collect P731 billion and an additional P20 billion in tax refund for a total of P751 billion.
