Printing firm cleared of alleged tax irregularities

MANILA, Philippines - Marikina City-based private printing firm Ready Form, Inc. has secured a tax clearance from the Bureau of Internal Revenue that clears it of any irregularities in its financial statements.

Guillermo “Jun” Sylianteng, general manager of RFI, said Antonio Montemayor, BIR regional director who supervised the probe by revenue officers from its special investigation division, has closed his firm’s tax case after their conduct of an intensive “internal revenue tax assessment.”

Sylianteng said that the probe on his company came after the National Printing Office (NPO) called for one. It will be recalled that the NPO, late last year, had suspended RFI as an accredited security printer for five years, claiming it engaged in alleged falsification of its financial papers.

“This clears us of any claims of irregularities by the NPO,” Sylianteng said. He earlier assailed the NPO’s move of issuing them the suspension, saying the NPO had no jurisdiction over it since it had already stopped from participating in NPO sub-contract bidding of the printing contracts of government agencies.

Sylianteng said that the suspension meted by the NPO was illegal and warned that the agency’s officials faced criminal charges for issuing the blacklist. 

Sylianteng pointed out that the NPO itself was blacklisted by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the Government Procurement Policy Board. This, he said, was after RFI filed a petition before the LTO asking that the NPO be suspended for two years and that it starts blacklisting proceedings against the government printing firm before the GPPB), which is the government body authorized to blacklist erring suppliers and contractors.

In the petition of RFI before the LTO, the firm said that RA 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Reform Act provided that procurement cannot be delegated, which is what happens when the NPO gets printing contracts of government agencies and subcontracts these to its supposed “accredited security printers”.

RFI pointed out that the LTO’s award of a printing contract to the NPO in the first half of 2010 violated the provision of R.A. 9184 which could pave the way for the suspension of the NPO by the LTO, and its blacklisting by the GPPB.