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MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Customs again failed to meet its collection target last month.
Preliminary data from the bureau revealed that it raised P25.43 billion in April, nine percent below its P28 billion goal for the period.
This brought the agency's total revenue collection to P94.96 billion for the first four months of the year, or P14.43 billion lower than its target of P109.36 billion for the period.
In April of last year, Customs raised P22.44 billion, or 13 percent higher than this year's collection.
“The good thing about our April collection is that we incurred only a single digit shortfall,” Commissioner Rufino Biazon said.
He blamed the shortfall on the full physical examination of reefer vans starting the latter part of April. The move is aimed at addressing reports of rampant smuggling of frozen meat products.
“The processing time slowed down as a result of full physical examination. That’s normal if you become stricter with the importers, they tend to shift to wait-and-see mode. Sad to say that even though that some of them are technical smugglers, they still pay something,” Biazon said.
“We were collecting at least P1 billion a day and one time we collected more than P3 billion a day. We were optimistic to hit our target but collection slowed down during the latter part of the month,” he said.
The Customs chief said Holy Week also dampened the bureau's revenue collection performance.
For the whole year, the bureau is assigned to raise P346.41 billion.
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