VITARICH Corp., once the country’s largest poultry producer, on Thursday said it has been assessed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) P1.3 billion for taxes the company has not paid way back in 2011.
The company, which was in corporate rehabilitation after it was felled by the Asian financial crisis, said in its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the assessment involved income tax, value-added tax, withholding taxes, documentary-stamp tax and fringe-benefit tax for the period.
“Vitarich is taking appropriate legal steps to assail the assessment on the grounds of prescription and lack of factual basis,” he said.
Vitarich filed for corporate rehabilitation in 2006. Late last year the company asked the court to exit from the corporate rehabilitation.
For the first quarter of the year, the company said it had a turnaround of operations after hitting a net income of P38 million, as against last year’s loss of P63 million.
Sales rose 70 percent for the period to P1.16 billion, from the previous year’s P685 million, due to higher volume of animal and aqua feeds it sold during the period. “The company will continue with its aggressive marketing campaigns to further expand its sales and distribution network and identify its niche in the market.
Gross profit more than doubled to P154 million due to improved efficiency of its poultry operations.
Established by brothers Feliciano, Lorenzo and Pablo Sarmiento in 1950, Vitarich has since been a major link in the Philippines’s farm-to-consumer supply chain.
In 2014 regulator Securities and Exchange Commission approved the debt-to-equity conversion of P2.38 billion of the company’s debt.
ADM Capital and Altus Capital have infused capital into Vitarich through Kormasinc Inc., a special purpose company set up to absorb all of the debts of the company.
Last year the company sold its 13-hectare property in Marilao, Bulacan, to low-cost housing developer 8990 Holdings Inc. for P610 million.
The company is only using 30 percent of Marilao plant’s capacity and has been dragging the company’s finances, officials said. Proceeds of that sale were used for debt repayment and working capital, the company said in its report.