Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said he is confident new Customs commissioner Rey Guerrero will perform his job not only in eliminating corruption in the agency and curbing smuggling but also in collecting an average of P55 billion a month in 2019.
Dominguez told reporters he already met with Guerrero, the successor of former Customs chief Isidro Lapeña. He said the newly-designated Customs chief was capable to lead the agency.
“We discussed the way forward to implement the president’s wishes, the urgent need to completely eliminate corruption and smuggling particularly illegal drugs, the trade facilitation function of the BoC, and the target of collecting an average of P55 billion per month in 2019,” Dominguez said in a statement.
“Jagger [Guerrero] absolutely is up to the challenge and I am fully confident in his ability to deliver on all fronts. The DoF team will provide our utmost support,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez also welcomed and expressed appreciation to the latest statement from presidential spokesperson and chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo, who said that the Finance secretary continued to enjoy the trust and confidence of President Rodrigo Duterte amid calls from some quarters for Dominguez to resign or be fired by the president.
“As one of the president’s trusted economic managers, he steered our economy to become one of the best-performing growth leaders in the region and continues to perform remarkably,” Panelo said in a briefing in Malacañang.
Panelo cited the record-high revenue collections under the watch of Dominguez, including the highest first-quarter tax effort ever achieved in the past 25 years.
“We expect Secretary Dominguez to maintain his superb work ethic for the rest of his stint in the Department of Finance,” Panelo said, adding that Dominguez was aware of what was happening in the Bureau of Customs.
The Coalition Against Corruption earlier called for the resignation of Dominguez over his reported silence on alleged corruption in the Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
“The BIR and BoC are perceived to be the most corrupt government agencies. Despite President [Rodrigo] Duterte’s declared war on corruption, the DoF has not shown any visible initiative to curb corruption in these two agencies,” CAC said in a statement.
The coalition also questioned Dominguez’s “deathly” silence” on the drugs and corruption that engulfed the Customs recently, referring to the alleged entry of P11 billion worth of shabu in the country hidden inside BoC magnetic lifters in August.
The coalition said Duterte’s order for a military “takeover” of the Bureau of Customs was an indirect admission of the failure of the managements of the DoF and the BoC.
Duterte ordered the military to take over the Customs bureau days after sacking all officials of the agency.
“Secretary Dominguez, for almost three years, you have been at the helm of the DoF… Instead, your strategy was to impose more taxes that caused untold suffering to the nation,” CAC said.