Central Visayas gets largest share from mining taxes

CEBU, Philippines - The Philippine Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI) reported on Wednesday that Central Visayas still has the largest collection of payments from mining companies, accounting nearly 31 percent of the total reconciled collections in local government units.

The PH-EITI 2015 report, which covered data from 2013, showed that of the total LGU receipts amounting to P301.5 million, Central Visayas received the highest payment of local taxes from mining, oil and gas companies.

It registered P93 million or exactly P92, 956,489, which is 30.8 percent of the total collections mainly from Carmen Copper Corporation – a large-scale mining company in Toledo City, Cebu.

But more than presenting the data, PH-EITI wanted to channel them to important stakeholders as they seek to identify gaps in the government system and provide venue for reforms that may improve governance in the extractive sector.

“We are not only here to communicate the results or findings of the report but also to get feedbacks from our stakeholders that include local government units and local communities that are hosting extracting operations,” said PH-EITI national coordinator Atty. Maria Karla Espinosa in a press conference Wednesday.

Cebu City was the second stop next to Davao City for the nationwide roadshow that is aimed at providing platforms for dialogue between the government, the industry and civil society representatives that have a stake in extractive activities in mining, oil and gas.

“Through these exercises to gather these feedbacks from the stakeholders, they are in the best position to know the real conditions and the real issues and to validate whether the findings of the report already published reflect the real situation on the ground,” said Espinosa.

She stressed these feedbacks are taken seriously and in fact, they are handed over to the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC), which in turn gets in touch with the implementing agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, among others.

“It requires action plans from the implementing agencies and the actual implementation. Since the first report, we have been following up on the actions of the recommendations (given),” she said.

She added, all the feedbacks during the announcement of the second report will be collated and will be incorporated in the third report that is currently being produced.

One of the feedbacks she cited was the sentiments from LGUs that they don’t get their share from the national wealth.

As a response, Espinosa said, the Department of Budget and Management had made the downloading of shares direct to LGUs and not from the agency anymore.

However, some LGUs lamented that while they receive financial returns in lump sum, they are clueless as to the exact amount of local taxes shared from the extracting operations alone.

“What DBM did was to require the collecting agencies to disaggregate or itemize… We are looking forward to LGUs being able now to see exactly the sources of their shares in national wealth,” she said. (FREEMAN)