BIR, BoC surpass Aug collection goals

THE government’s main revenue-generating agencies breached their collection targets by double digits last month, further proving that the country’s economic recovery has begun, the Department of Finance (DoF) announced on Tuesday.

During the Sulong Pilipinas consultative workshop on the sidelines of the Metro Manila Business Conference, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd

reported that “both the Bureau of Customs (BoC) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue ( BIR) registered hefty tax collections in August and exceeded their targets for the month by 33 percent and 46 percent, respectively.”

In his presentation at the event, Dominguez showed that Customs’ actual tax take hit P44.65 billion in the month, higher than its P33.68-billion goal; and the Internal Revenue’s collection reached P172.06 billion, higher than its P118.20-billion target.

Despite the improvement, these amounts remain smaller than the P53.6 billion and P205.6 billion gathered, respectively, a year earlier.

The BoC’s collections last month brought its year-to-date tax take to P347.55, down 15.47 percent from P411.2 billion in the first eight months of 2019.

The BIR’s January- to- August collections settled at P1.28 billion, 11.35 percent lower than P1.45 billion in the same period last year.

Dominguez said the agencies’ collection performance, and improvements in the country’s labor market and manufacturing sector, were “strong indicators that the economy is starting to recover.”

“The progress we have seen in our labor market after the slight easing of mobility restrictions is very encouraging,” he added.

The Finance chief noted that the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent in July from 17.7 percent in April after the government gradually reopened the economy after relaxing these restrictions.

“The continuous slower contraction in manufacturing production also signals rising economic activities,” he said.

His cited recent data from the Philippine Statistics Authority that showed the country’s volume of production index shrank by 11.9 percent in July, slower than the 38.8-percent decline in April.

The latest figure is also slower than June’s 12.5- percent drop, but faster than the 8.5- percent dip year-on-year, according to the statistics agency.

The country’s value of production index contracted by 14.8 percent in July, slower than April’s 41.2 percent, Dominguez said.

The newest figure is also slower than the 16-percent slide in June, but quicker than the 7.9-percent fall in July 2019.