PHILIPPINE TOBACCO PRESIDENT HITS DoF FOR GIVING CONGRESS WRONG DATA
MANILA, JANUARY 10, 2011 (MALAYA) BY DENNIS GADIL A tobacco industry leader has accused a finance official of coming out with projected low tax collections from tobacco products in 2011 in a bid to stampede Congress into amending the excise tax law.
Rodolfo Salanga, Philippine Tobacco Institute (PTI) president, said the projections of Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran are belied by the upswing in tax collections during the fourth quarter of 2010.
Salanga said Beltran was feeding erroneous data to lawmakers in an apparent attempt to sway members of Congress into amending the excise tax structure on alcohol and tobacco products.
"It is very worrying that a finance official in charge of domestic fiscal policies is ignorant of the exact collection of revenue agencies under him," Salanga said.
"How can you come up with good recommendations to improve the fiscal situation of the country when you do not even know what is happening?" he added.
Beltran is undersecretary for policy development and management services as well as the head of Domestic Finance and Legislative Liaison.
The finance undersecretary was recently quoted as saying that the finance department expects collection from tobacco products to dip to P22.5 billion in 2011 despite an 8 percent increase in the tax on alcohol and tobacco products which took effect last January 1.
Beltran also said Finance department expected excise tax collection from tobacco products in 2010 to amount only to P25.8 billion. The finance official also said the 8 percent increment in tax rates in sin products would amount to P7 billion in additional tax revenues.
But internal revenue data showed that total excise tax collection from tobacco products as of November 2010 stood to P27.83 billion, an amount in excess of the 2010 collection goal.
"It's obvious that Beltran wants to change the current excise tax structure by presenting a bleak scenario, yet his statement is belied by the very agency tasked to collect excise taxes," Salanga said.
"Lawmakers might come out with the wrong tax laws because of the erroneous data fed them by the finance department," he added.
He also stressed that contrary to claims by some finance officials, the current multi-tiered excise tax system on tobacco and alcohol products is not difficult to administer. The government is pushing for a unified single tax system for sin products.
"The fact that collection from tobacco products has continuously exceeded government targets in 2010 clearly shows that the current structure works," Salanga said.
The PTI president said the finance department at the very least should properly and consistently report relevant government data so as not to create unfair perceptions against the industry.
The same group also raised a howl of protest over the inclusion last year of non-governmental organizations and the bumping off of a key trade official in the country's delegation to the tobacco conference of the World Health Organization in Uruguay.
The PTI said the position of the country against banning raw ingredients used in the manufacture of American-blended cigarettes would be compromised with the uneven representation in the Philippine panel.
PTI noted that instead of sending a representative of the international trade relations unit of the Department of Trade and Industry, government sent the consumer unit of the trade agency, which is normally anti-tobacco.
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