THE administration of Mayor Antolin A. Oreta III collected more than P500 million in revenue from Malabon City’s taxpayers in January, the city government’s Treasury Department (TD) said.
The TD document obtained by the BusinessMirror showed the P519,815,038.75 tax collection in January was equivalent to 29 percent of the city’s P1.79-billion 2018 target.
The TD document was prepared by Maria Carola I. Francisco and approved by City Treasurer Dr. Amalia C. Santos.
Leonardo L. Padua, the city government’s Public Information Office consultant, told the BusinessMirror the more than P500-million collected revenues were only for January. Thus, the P1.2 billion is surely attainable since the city government’s tax and collecting offices are efficient tax collectors.
Padua also said in a mobile-phone interview Oreta made sure the procedure in tax collection on business, real-property tax (RPT) and other sources of the city government’s income was “friendly to the taxpayers” so that they would be encouraged to pay on time.
Most important was the procedure in the application of business establishments and payment of RPT, Padua said. Oreta trimmed down the procedure to three steps from more than 10.
Padua said the tax collection for the start of the year was definitely “good since the collection already reached more than P500 million in one month alone.”
This meant the almost P1.8-billion target collection until December 2018 is attainable, Padua said.
A computation by the BusinessMirror revealed the city government should collect P1.27 million per month for the remaining 11 months of the year.
In the same TD’s document the BusinessMirror obtained, the highest contribution to the January revenue came from the Business Permit and Licensing Office. It collected P189,403,411.07, or 66 percent of the BPLO target.
It was followed by the City Assessor’s Department (CAD) with P129,754,463.38 collection of RPT. This represented 43 percent of the CAD’s target. The third highest collection was P22,911,985.70 from the Local Building Office, P52 percent of its target.
However, the city government failed to collect even a single centavo from the residents of the housing project in Barangay Tañong Urban BLISS, the TD document revealed.
Padua asserted the “impressive” collection of taxes and various types of payments was a result of the changes done by Oreta in almost all aspects of public governance that contributes directly or indirectly in the financial standing of his administration since he became mayor of Malabon in 2012.
Padua, however, clarified Oreta has many plans to carry out to further increase his administration’s tax collection so there would be sufficient funds that will be used to carry out his projects and plans for the remaining months of his second term.
Oreta plans to seek his third and last term for mayor in 2019 polls, Padua noted.
