GMA to keep tabs on BIR, BOC collections

President Arroyo is set to conduct monthly command conferences at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to ensure that the government will meet its P63-billion budget deficit target for the year.

Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said this is one of the reform measures of the government to put its fiscal house in order.

 “We must continuously monitor their performance,” Teves said, referring to the government’s two main revenue-generating agencies, the BIR and the BOC.

Two weeks ago, Mrs. Arroyo met with officials of the two agencies to review and assess the implementation of revenue measures now being undertaken by the BIR and the BOC to make up for their poor performance in the first half of the year.

Malacañang wants to make sure that government’s revenue agencies meet their respective revenue goals given heavy pressure from credit rating agencies and multilateral lenders.

“Monthly command conferences will be helpful,” Teves said.

The BIR missed its collection goal of P373.3 billion in the first half of the year by P38.6 billion after it only managed to raise P334.7 billion, prompting Malacañang to replace former BIR Commissioner Jose Mario Bunag in early June. The shortfall also lead the government to miss its budget deficit target of P31.3 billion in the first half of the year after it incurred a deficit of P41 billion.

The BIR is supposed to collect P57.8 billion for the month.

The BOC, meanwhile, managed to collect only P92.2 billion worth of duties and taxes, short of its P105.3- billion collection target

The two agencies, however, managed to make up for their dismal performance by meeting their respective collection goals in July.

The BIR collected P57.9 billion in taxes for the month of July, slightly higher than the target for the period of P57.83 billion, latest data from the agency showed.

Similarly, the BOC’s collections rose to P20.8 billion in July from a target of P19 billion.

This allowed the National Government to post a budget surplus of P1.6 billion in July, a marked turnaround compared with the deficit of P17 billion posted in the same month last year.

Data also showed that the July fiscal deficit reached P39.4 billion or P9.1 billion lower than the P48.5 billion deficit posted in the same period last year.