President Rodrigo Duterte ordered all agencies to maintain government contracts during his inaugural speech Thursday.
“I order all department secretaries and heads of agencies to refrain from changing and bending the rules government contracts, transactions and projects already approved and awaiting implementation. Changing the rules when the game is ongoing is wrong,” Duterte said in his speech.
The Bureau of Customs and the Philippine Ports Authority were recently at odds over directives issued by former Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina, giving certain ports in the country the status of authorized customs facilities that effectively elevated their business from domestic port operators to one providing international services in violation of contracts signed with the government through the PPA.
Duterte said he was against secrecy and advocated “transparency in all government contracts, projects and business transactions from submission of proposals to negotiation to perfection and finally, to consummation.”
“Do them and we will work together. Do not do them, we will part sooner than later,” he said.
The BoC has been underperforming and perenially missing revenue targets set by the government.
It missed the revenue collection target in the past five months amounting to P43.25 billion, which translates into nearly P300 million in foregone income that Duterte said in an earlier speech was being lost due to rampant smuggling and corruption.
BOC tax collection performance records show that the agency recorded a deficit of P8.85 billion or P295 million in losses a day in May 2016.
Lina blamed the missed revenue targets of the BoC on the sliding price of crude oil in the world market and not on smuggling and corruption as Duterte mentioned.
Duterte declared BoC as one of the most corrupt agencies, prompting him to order “zero tolerance” on smuggling and graft at the agency.
Port stakeholders have complained against a series of directives of Lina that effectively altered the contracts port users have with the PPA.
The PPA ordered its port managers to ignore the Lina directives and maintain a status quo in the Philippine ports Lina declared as ACFs.