SBMA expects to exceed 2008 tax collections
Posted on December 26th, 2009
The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) expects tax collection in the Freeport zone to exceed that of 2008 level. SBMA administrator Armand Arreza is counting on the combined collection efforts of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the Subic Bay Freeport which went up last quarter. Arreza said this will “pull Subic through to a positive performance despite a shortfall in foreign direct investment (FDI).”
Total revenues in 2008 were P5.27 billion. Arreza said that they “only need about P394.6 million more to reach the 2008. That’s about a month’s worth of collections to make.” He added however that that the BIR figures for October and November has yet to come in.
Combined cash collections from the two bureaus in the last 11 months averaged P443.7 monthly. Arreza is optimistic that “the December earnings alone should bring total earnings over and above the 2008 record.” The total collections from the two agencies from January to November 2009 have reached P4.88 billion. This is broken down into P3.85 billion from the BOC and P1.03 billion from the BIR.
Aside from its cash collections, the customs office in Subic was also able to record some P2.78 billion in non-cash earnings. These were mostly composed of government to government transactions. BOC, however, fell short by about P71.36 in order to attain its 2009 target. The agency has set from its 11-month target of P3.92 billion.
The exports generated by the businesses in the Subic Bay Freeport zone this year have reached $800.98 million as of September 2009. This has a slight increase from the $755 million it has in the same period last year.
Imports transactions, on the other hand, show a total of $2.01 billion from January to November 2009 per SBMA records. The figure is 6.14% below the $2.14 billion it has in the same period in 2008.
