Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales said Sunday that he has broached the idea of another reduction in the bureau’s P277 billion target for 2009 by P48 billion in order to have a more realistic goal for the remainder of the year.

In an interview, Morales said that during the most recent Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC) meeting held before the long Lenten holiday, he has already presented the statistics for the first two months of the year, where figures indicate a 20 percent drop in the volume
of oil and non oil importations nationwide.

For the period of January to February, 2009, cash collections fell short by P2.96 billion against target and even declined by P1.06 billion compared to last year’s output.

Duties collected for the period grew only by P400 million, while excise tax collections crept up by P318 million. However, this was not enough to make up for the 13.6 percent dip in Value Added Tax (VAT) collections which translated to P2.83 billion due to the downtrend in crude oil imports.

While there was a higher collection from petroleum products by 34 percent, crude imports dropped by 62.5 percent. Non oil collections also dropped by 8.6 percent.

The report further stated that total value of imports on a year-on-year comparison posted a negative growth of P141.7 billion or 30 percent for both dutiable and non dutiable importation.

The value of crude oil also suffered the highest decline at 85.7 percent while petroleum products posted a 8.7 percent drop this year.

“Right now, they (DBCC) are still considering… their deliberation is still not over, it is ongoing. What we are saying is that even the reduced P277 billion (from an original P317 billion) target is still too high… even if they adopt our last year’s target of P254 billion, it would still be a fighting target,” he said.

“All I am saying is that even the NEDA confirmed that there is a 20 percent decrease in growth. With this economic slowdown, no matter how efficient our collection efforts are, it will not be enough. It is nobody’s fault, not the economic managers, not ours, but this is simply the way it is,” he said.

He disclosed that the DBCC is currently looking into their request. He added that they have exhausted all their efforts to collect more but the current economic situation keeps on pulling them down until the only feasible resort remaining is reduction.