NTC revenue reaches P6.63 billion in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines — The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has surpassed its annual target by more than P1 billion, with three months still left in the year.

In a report, the NTC said that its revenue collection has reached P6.63 billion as of September, beating by 19 percent the P5.58 billion set by the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC).

In spite of this, NTC commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba called on NTC employees to make a final push in generating additional income as the year closes.

Cordoba said the NTC succeeded in exceeding its DBCC target by strengthening its measures in regulating the activities of its stakeholders. The agency collects spectrum users’ fees, as well as regulation charges and penalties, that it remits to government coffers.

As a regulator, the NTC is tasked to monitor the activities of cable and commercial TV operators and radio stations. The agency also monitors the operations of telco firms, including commercial and portable radio operators.

Apart from earning from spectrum fees, the NTC slaps fines and penalties on stakeholders who violate provisions of their contract for broadcast activities and telco services.

Cordoba said the NTC hopes that its remittances contribute to financing priority programs of the Marcos administration, particularly on food security, free education, and public health.

“The NTC’s systematic collection effort is the agency’s modest way of contributing to the public service programs of President Marcos, priorities of which are on food security, free and universal primary education, and public health,” Cordoba said.

The Marcos administration expects to sustain a budget deficit of P1.65 trillion or equivalent to 7.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) for the year. In the medium term, it wants to slash the deficit to 6.1 percent of the GDP in 2023, 5.1 percent in 2024, and 4.1 percent in 2025.

To do this, the government plans to moderate its borrowings to within the P2 trillion level. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, the government borrowed a total of P2.74 trillion from domestic and foreign sources to fund its response measures.

With less borrowings, the government needs state agencies like the NTC to raise their revenue stream to fill in the budget gap.

The government expects to generate a sum of P3.3 trillion in 2022, P3.63 trillion in 2023, P4.06 trillion in 2024, and P4.58 trillion in 2025.