The national government has a lot of catching up to do in terms of revenue generation, as the Philippines’ revenue collection effort is considered as one of the lowest among Asean countries, this according to a report published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
The state-think tank’s latest Development Research News authored by PIDS President Gilberto Llanto and Senior Research Fellow Adoracion Navarro said that the revenues collected by the government in 2013 as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is still below the amount generated by its peers in the Southeast Asian region.
The government collected P1.716 trillion in 2013, which was equivalent to 14.8 percent of GDP. The amount generated fell below the P1.746 trillion program by 1.7 percent.
"The average revenue-to-GDP ratio in the ASEAN excluding Brunei Darussalam (which has a ratio skewed by its large petroleum revenues) was 18.6 percent in 2012,” The research paper said.
"The Philippines’ revenue generation effort is second from the bottom in ranking,” it added.
The country’s revenue effort in 2012 was 14.52 percent. Cambodia was the only country which fell below the Philippines with a revenue-to-GDP ratio of 14.48 percent.
The PIDS publication mentioned that the Department of Finance aims to generate revenues equivalent to 18 percent of GDP by the end of President Benigno Aquino III’s term by 2016.
It added that the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s efforts to increase tax collections, which include the "Run After Tax Evaders” program, are "in the right direction.”
"However, these programs will be more effective if the present administration would be able to prosecute, with as much zeal as in the cases against professionals and celebrities, the big cases that had escaped the arm of the tax man,” the document said.
"The administration appears to have the political will to prosecute big cases, expose sophisticated tax evasion modes to the public, and serve tax-evasion-deterrent examples to big-time offenders,” it added.
For this year, the Aquino administration has a revenue program of P2.018 trillion, equivalent to 15.5 percent of GDP.//
