Down a fourth month, full-year target in Peril: APEC holidays pull down Customs collections

MANILA, Philippines - Last month’s holidays due to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings pulled down the Bureau of Customs’ revenue collections for a fourth month in a row.

According to preliminary figures, Customs collected P29.1 billion in November, 27.4-percent below its P40-billion target for the month and down 6.9 percent from last year.

Data could still be slightly revised once final collection figures are released by the Bureau of the Treasury.

November marked the fourth month Customs recorded negative growth in collections after contractions in August (seven percent), September (0.8 percent) and October (five percent).

“Despite expediting customs services several weeks before the APEC meetings, limited port activity had severely affected revenues,” Customs said in a statement.

“Truck bans, road closures and traffic rerouting schemes within the ports’ perimeters further pulled down the daily average collection from P2 billion to as low as P50 million,” it added.

Metro Manila hosted this year’s annual APEC meetings with the culmination held from Nov. 18 to 19. Special non-working holidays were declared in the capital, although Customs said then its operations would be business as usual.

Aside from the holidays, Customs said collections declined due to lower value of imports driven by weak commodity prices in the global market.

Specifically, average import values decreased 7.2 percent for the month even as their volumes rose 12.8 percent.

Low import values, in turn, result into lower valuation where Customs duties and levies are based.

“For non-oil, volume of imports grew 19.4 percent. However, the effect of low world price oil that reduce production cost (lowered) value of imports by 0.8 percent,” Customs said.

For oil imports, meanwhile, both shipment volume and value dropped 10.2 percent and 47.2 percent, respectively. Oil accounts for about 30 percent of Customs revenues.