THE Bureau of Customs (BOC) under acting commissioner Yogi Filemon Ruiz is just a few “pennies” short of surpassing its assigned collection target this year with still two months to go before the end of the fiscal year after registering more than P11 billion in surplus collection for the month of October.
Records from the bureau’s Financial Service showed the agency actually collected P75.5 billion in October, up by 18.6 percent or P11.8 billion from its assigned target of P63.7 billion.
The double-digit surplus has pushed the BOC’s total tax take from the start of year to P714.3 billion, or just P7.22 billion shy of its 2022 annual target of 721.52 billion.
Year-on-year, the BOC’s collection for October is also upped by 35 percent or P19.6 billion compared to last year when it collected P56 billion.
The cumulative P714.3 billion collection since the start of the year is also higher by P188.9 billion or 37 percent, compared to P525.4 billion collection last year.
The breaching of the BOC’s annual revenue target this early is made more remarkable as the BOC’s monthly surplus collection continues to dip, compared to its June and July surplus of P20.003 billion and P23.639 billion, respectively, covering the last 2 months of former Armed Forces chief, Gen. Rey Leonardo ‘Jagger’ Guerrero, as customs commissioner.
From P23.639 billion surplus in July, the surplus slide down to P20 billion in August, the first full month of Ruiz as customs chief and to P17.5 billion in September.
In a brief statement, the BOC attributed the hefty tax collection increases to its continuing efforts “to implement measures against revenue leakages, corruption, and smuggling while easing process bottlenecks.”
The statement, however, for the first time, failed to identify which among the bureau’s 17 collection districts delivered on their revenue targets.
Ruiz, in a previous media interview, said nobody should be surprised if the agency hit the P1 trillion mark in revenue collection at the end of the year, a historic accomplishment for the agency.