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TWO
separate but related stories coming out this week from
the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs
may yet—though by a long shot—provide Finance Secretary
Gary Teves some respite from a series of setbacks in the
tough job of keeping fiscal balance.
In the
first story, BIR Officer in Charge Lilian B. Hefti has
shuffled district personnel, reassigning the
better-performing ones to places considered more
challenging in a make-or-break effort to stop the
agency’s P47.7-billion collection shortfall in the first
half from growing uncontrollably.
Hefti
issued a series of orders covering collectors from as
far up as Tuguegarao, Cagayan, in the north to
Cebu City
in Central Visayas.
Much of
the shuffle, though, affected revenue district officials
in Metro Manila and nearby areas, from where bulk of the
BIR’s P765.9-billion collection goal this year is
supposed to come.
Hefti
and her boss Teves have both vowed to make the second
semester some sort of a joint “make-or-break period” in
light of Teves’ vow that the budget deficit cap of P63
billion won’t be changed under any circumstances.
To be
sure, part of that confidence in meeting the deficit
target stems from the government’s hope that the planned
asset sale program this year—especially involving state
equity in San Miguel Corp. and Meralco—would bring in a
hefty hoard of money, with Teves saying the exercise
alone should generate more or less P100 billion already.
But even
Teves knows that without a serious effort to get the
revenue agencies bringing in the goods as promised,
asset sales won’t go far enough; as it is, the
collection shortfall has widened the six-month deficit
by some P10 billion already.
Teves
knows he was saved from more embarrassment only by the
offsetting effect of interest savings during the period.
In the
case of the BOC, meanwhile, there is a report that the
Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor
General have deputized 32 lawyers to the waterfront to
help prosecute smuggling cases.
Now,
nearly three dozen lawyers may seem many, but when one
considers the staggering challenge facing Customs, that
may even be inadequate. Estimates of losses to continued
smuggling range from a low of P100 billion to a high of
P150 billion yearly. Looking at this, one sees how high
the stakes are, indeed, in making the campaign against
smuggling succeed.
The
stakes become higher when one considers that this is the
same plague that has been blamed not only for the
hobbling of government revenue targets but also for
crippling local industries that cannot compete with the
influx, thanks to our porous ports and long coastline,
of imported “duty-free” (because they cheat) items—be
these in agriculture or consumer items, such as luxury
items that hide under the routine misdeclaration going
on each day at Customs.
These—the hundreds of billions of pesos lost to cheats
each day, whether it’s in the BIR or Customs—constitute
our “state of evasion,” and it’s a pity that in her
speech on Monday, the President didn’t dwell too much on
it. Beyond the tired and trite orders in the past, we
don’t know whether or how political will be exercised in
supporting the campaign of our revenue agencies for
better collection. And yet, at bottom, so much in our
life depends on their success. |
