Act fast to meet BOC collection target, Recto tells Lapeña

Isidro Lapeña INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

Newly-appointed Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña should waste no time being an on-the-job trainee and should immediately hit the ground running to meet the Bureau of Customs’ (BOC) collection targets, Senator Ralph Recto said on Tuesday.

“For the BOC, the scoreboard that matters is the one that shows collections. Because if it fails in its collections, many government programs will suffer,” Recto said in a statement.

Recto said the Customs chief’s main mission is to rally the 3,031 employees of the second biggest revenue earner to hit their assigned collection target of P468 billion this year, or an average of P1.28 billion daily.

And to meet this goal, Recto said Lapeña must craft a “catch-up and turnaround plan” to arrest its “consistent record” of failing to meet collection goals.

Recto said that in 2016, the BOC collected P398.4 billion of its P409-billion revenue target. For the first six months of 2017, the BOC revenue reached P212.1 billion, also short of the P217.9 billion goal for the period.

“In fairness kay [former Customs Commissioner Nicanor] Faeldon, hindi ganoon kalaki ang disparity. Kaunting push pa, makakamit na ang target (A few more push and we will meet the target),” Recto said.

President Rodrigo Duterte announced Lapeña’s appointment to the BOC on Monday night, replacing Nicanor Faeldon as the Commissioner. Lapeña’s appointment was made  amid ongoing congressional probes on  the P6.4-billion drug smuggling controversy.

Quoting data from the President’s Budget Message for 2018, Recto said the government continues to lose P165.5 billion every year from smuggling—P44 billion of which were lost to fuel smuggling.

The senator called on the public to support the reform measures at the BOC, as its collection represent a fifth of the country’s total tax revenue target for 2017.

“Kaya minsan kahit ano pa ang inis natin sa BOC, dapat suportahan natin ang reform measures sa loob kasi nga 20 centavos per budget peso galing sa kanila, P1.28 billion ang daily collection target, at P154 million kada taon ang collection burden ng bawat isang empleyado ng Customs,” Recto said.

(No matter how irritated we are the BOC, we need to support the reform measures in the agency because 20 centavos for each peso in the budget comes from the bureau, their daily collection target is P1.28 billion, and each Customs employee has an annual collection goal of P154 million.)