Tax collections of the Cagayan de Oro City government to date are on track to exceed the P2.6-billion budget originally submitted by Mayor Oscar S. Moreno to the city council which subsequently slashed it by over P300 million.
This was revealed by City Treasurer Dr. Glenn C. Bañez during the press conference called by Mayor Moreno to explain his veto of the 2014 budget slashed by the city council.
City Treasurer Glenn Bañez
“As of Jan 31, 2014 city has collected above P99 million if we include the cedula for individual business permits,” Dr. Bañez said. “If we include the corporate cedulas, we have exceeded P100 million already.”
“If we are to base our target collections based on the budget submitted by the chief executive to the city council, more or less we are already at 55 percent as of January. And we still have February and March, as well as a second, third and fourth quarters,” he added.
Over the same period last year, Dr. Banez said collections reached P275 million, compared to P380+ million to date this year.
“This is an increase of P105+ million or a 38 percent increase including cedula for individuals and corporations. For corporations we increased by over 100 percent. For individual cedulas, we increased by almost 33 percent or by one third over last year over the same period.”
“For the first month alone, the city council has already been proven wrong in its revenue reduction,” said Mayor Oscar S. Moreno. “But it’s not a matter of right or wrong but rather of delineation. Revenue generation is an executive function.”
02-17-2014 Mayor Oscar S. Moreno with Glenn Bañez
The chief executive said local revenues have been surpassing expectations with record highs. For instance, in Cogon Market where there is an annual registration every second week of February, collections last year reached P686, 000.
“For the first week of February this year, it had already breached P1.397 million,” the mayor stressed. “That’s over a 100 percent increase for only the first week!”
He denied there were grumblings by many businessmen over the increase in business taxes.
“Those who complained are the tax evaders. There’s no place for tax evaders here in Cagayan de Oro. We did not impose any new taxes. Perhaps others were just used to not paying the proper taxes since these were not collected by the past administration. But of course, this also meant there was a lower level of service to the people.”
“The more taxes you collect, the more accountable you become because people will be watching you closely. And that is the essence of decentralization,” he concluded.
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