CUSTOMS Commissioner Ruffy Biazon has identified several measures to ensure the attainment of the agency’s P365 billion revenue goal next year.
Some of these measures include re-shuffling of personnel in the first quarter of next year, strengthening of the Value Reference Information System (VRIS), faster disposal of seized smuggled items, strengthening of the post-entry audit, and transfer of the Interim Customs Accreditation (ICARE) from the Revenue Collection Monitoring Group (RCMG) to Intelligence Division.
“I’m hoping that the target would be lowered but since this is still not sure, we are sticking to the P365 billion and will do everything to achieve our goal,” Biazon told reporters in a briefing Thursday.
Biazon said their collectors would be the first to be included in the re-shuffle, which would be done in stages “so that we can put in the right person in the right position.”
BOC personnel have been informed about this plan as a way of warning for them to be efficient and responsible in their duties, otherwise be transferred, he said.
On the strengthening of the VRIS, which is the reference being used for the price standards of products brought in the country, Biazon said they will continue to build up their data base to make sure that this is up-to-date and really shows the correct price vis-à-vis those sold in the retail stores.
He said a test run on their data base would be done in the first quarter of next year and this would be repeated on a monthly basis from then on.
Biazon also said they vie for the fast-tracking of the disposal and bidding of seized items, as a way of generating revenue from non-traditional sources, to ensure that they get additional revenues from this and clear their stock yards of smuggled items.
He said there were about 2,000 container vans in the various BOC ports around the country that contained “over-staying” smuggled items.
Meanwhile, Biazon said the Philippines was already behind the other countries in terms of post-entry audit.
“We are very strict in the entry of goods but we don’t have monitoring after that unlike in other countries that ‘s why we don’t know if the prices or amount they declared upon the entry of the items are really what is it in the market,” he said.
“We hope that all these measures will enable us to achieve our goal since there are moves again to cut the tariff of more products, which would be another loss for our part,” he said.
As of last October, the BOC’s collection rose by 1.84 percent year-on-year to P217.78 billion from the P213.53 billion same period last year.
For last October alone, BOC’s revenues reached P22.84 billion, 1.18 percent higher than year-ago’s P22.58 billion.
The inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) has given BOC a P320 billion revenue goal for this year, but there is a proposal to reduce this by 13 percent to P278 billion on account of the impact of lower import volume due to the negative economic developments overseas. [PNA]
