Subic port started 2015 with a throughput of 14,892 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in January, a whopping 433.6% increase from 2,791 TEUs recorded in the same month last year.
The latest figure beat the November 2014 tally of 14,175 TEUs, the previous highest volume ever recorded by the facility in a single month.
For full-year 2014, Subic handled 76,652 TEUs, 104.6% more than the 37,469 TEUs posted the year before. It also exceeded by 2.22% its revised target of 75,000 TEUs.
Currently, APL, Maersk Line, NYK Line, SITC Container Lines and Wan Hai Lines call Subic port weekly. Swire Shipping calls once a month. K Line and OOCL are ad-hoc callers.
In another development, taxes collected from the Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ) in the last six years by both the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) continue to break annual records.
Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chairman and administrator Roberto Garcia said customs collections and income taxes from Subic-registered companies and their employees “never faltered, and mirrored the overall uptick in the Philippine economy in the past few years.”
“This only shows that there has been continuous growth among business locators here in terms of earnings, as well as employment,” Garcia said in a press statement.
According to data submitted by BOC and BIR offices in Subic, combined collections began to improve in 2009 when the agencies netted P5.6 billion compared to P5.3 billion in 2008, or a growth of 6.18%.
In 2010, this increased by 19.25% to P6.7 billion; by 8.14% to P7.2 billion in 2011; 5.42% to P7.6 billion in 2012; and 66.28% to P12.7 billion in 2013.
Last year, the two agencies collected total taxes of P17.1 billion, putting 2014 collections 35% higher than those in the previous year.
Out of the 2014 combined collections, BOC contributed P15.3 billion, 36% higher than its P11.2 billion customs tally in 2013.
BOC in 2014 also registered non-cash collections of P2.2 billion from government-to-government transactions.
Meanwhile, BIR collected a total of P1.8 billion, broken down into income taxes worth P1.4 billion, value-added taxes worth P381 million, percentage taxes worth P1.8 million, and other taxes worth P29.5 million.
Garcia said a portion of the BIR collection in Subic is the 5% corporate tax computed from the annual gross income of Subic-registered locator companies.
He added that SBMA remits 3% out of the 5% corporate taxes to the national treasury, and the remaining 2% to neighboring communities as its local government unit share. – Roumina Pablo
