Amatong dares incoming Customs chief to improve tax collection

Finance Secretary Juanita Amatong challenged the Bureau of Customs yesterday to further improve its tax collection, saying the government needs all the revenues it can get to extricate itself from what she described as a "fiscal mess."

Amatong hurled the challenge to newly-appointed Customs Commissioner George Jereos during the turnover ceremony of the leadership of the Bureau of Customs at the Social Hall of the Port of Manila from outgoing Commissioner Antonio Bernardo.

"If you read all the newspapers today, you will know the challenges that are before us. We have to raise revenues to reduce the huge budgetary deficit. I expect we will be able to generate more revenues to help the government," Amatong said in a brief message to Jereos.

The finance secretary also warned that "unless we all work together toward this goal, all of us will be suffering from this economic crisis" as she asked the incoming commissioner to double his efforts to "break the record breaking tax collection record" of his predecessor.

"The government is heavily relying on the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue on this urgent matter," Amatong said.

In his acceptance speech, Jereos said he would do his best to meet the high expectations for him to generate more revenues that could spell out the big difference in helping the government reduce its budgetary deficit.

For starters, Jereos appealed to the bureau’s rank and file to help generate a climate conducive for business wherein the release of shipments could be fasttracked from the Customs zone so that factories would not suffer a slump in production.

He said he would issue new policy directions on this particular aspect of Customs transactions aimed at helping generate higher productions and, in turn, increasing revenues for the government, not to mention more employment.

"For smugglers, we would be running after them," the newly appointed Customs commissioner warned, adding that their shipments would be seized on the spot. In the next few weeks, you would know how we would be running against big-time smugglers," he added.

An insider, who rose from the ranks in his 34 years in the bureau, Jereos was warmly welcomed by the rank-and-file as shown by the unsolicited support manifested by his colleagues during the turnover ceremony.