MANILA Philippines — The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) on Tuesday said that it generated a total of P20.4 billion in revenue last year, the most since its creation in 1974.
In a statement, PPA General Manager Jay Santiago attributed the success to the agency’s fiscal management, as well as the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.
“It has been business as usual since we got back, we continue to veer away from the grip of the pandemic by contributing to the economy and increasing our revenues by 16%, more than the P17.5B in 2021 and P16.6B in 2020,” said Santiago.
“We believe this is a good sign and a great shift in gears during this rebound of the economy” he added.
The revenue increase is proof of the PPA’s efficient management of expenses, as well as in streamlining delivery of services to port users and stakeholders, said Santiago.
“In the past 10 years, the next highest total revenue of PPA was recorded during the pre-pandemic year 2019 amounting to P18.3B which is 5% higher than the income reached in 2018, so my point is, we can always surpass the initial target because we have set our own high value goals,” he said.
Citing the PPA 2022 report, Santiago also highlighted the agency’s performance after a 7.15 percent increase of containers handled at ports nationwide which resulted in a 5.01 percent increase in the volume of domestic cargoes.
Foreign containers also increased by 8.51 percent.
Meanwhile, sea travelers also increased by 155.97 percent or 35, 997,226 passengers, while ship calls also increased by 25.31 percent (95, 993 ship calls).
This increase, however, is mostly attributed to domestic ship calls after attaining a percentage of 26.22 or having 96,352 ship calls.
Foreign ship calls, on the other hand, had a decline at of 3.05 percent.