FORMER Armed Forces (AFP) chief of Staff, Gen. Rey Leonardo ‘Jagger’ Guerrero, has left behind a legacy of leadership as Commissioner of Customs that is hard to match nor surpass, as the agency recorded its highest collection in July, Guerrero’s last month in office.
Guerrero was President Rodrigo Duterte’s third and longest-serving customs commissioner after his appointment on October 25, 2018 until he was succeeded last July 25, 2022, by Yogi Filemon Ruiz, the erstwhile director of the Enforcement and Security Service (EES) or the Customs Police.
Based on the preliminary report from the BOC Financial Service, the agency collected a total of P84.424 billion, a 38.9 percent increase equivalent to P23.639 billion compared to its assigned target of P60.785 billion for the month.
Under Guerrero, the BOC has been consistent in surpassing its collection assignment since June 2021 and recorded its first ‘historic’ collection last March when it collected P70.778 billion.
This record, however, was broken in June when the BOC collected P76.290 billion against its assigned target of P56.287 billion for a 35.5 percent positive deviation equivalent to P20.003 billion. The latest figure has now eclipsed last June’s actual collection by more than 3 percent.
Contributing to the historic collection were revenues coming from the Tax Expenditure Fund (TEF) amounting to P1.128 billion and the Post Clearance Audit Group (PCAG) in the amount of P527.65 million.
On year-on-year basis, the BOC posted an increase of 34.1 percent, or P122.224 billion more than the P358.915 billion collected for the same period last year.
Last month’s collection also increased by P92.54 billion the agency’s surplus from its cumulative target of P388.597 billion for a positive deviation of 23.8 percent.
Entering the second half of the year, government revenue generated by the BOC is now at P481.139 billion or just P198 billion short of its target of P672.23 billion for this year.2022.
As Guerrero ended his term last week, a notorious importer of agricultural products was again apprehended while trying to bring in some P18 million worth of red and white onions from China thru the Port of Cagayan de Oro last July 28 declared as ‘soft tortilla wrap.’
District collector, Atty. Elvira Cruz, identified the importer as ‘Primex Export and Import Producer,’ which has already been caught thrice already in July while attempting to smuggle in the same products.
BOC records show that Primex was first apprehended on July 7, then on July 13 and then again last July 22 (see also Pinoy Exposé, July 23, 2022), based on the intelligence gathering mechanism and alert system created by Guerrero.