Cebu City falls short of revenue target by P1.3B

Despite reporting an increase in revenue collection this year, the City Treasurer’s Office of Cebu City will again be falling short of its P5.89 billion target.

This means, several projects that City Hall had programmed for implementation this year like the acquisition of new cars and even the full disbursement of the cash aid given to the city’s elderly residents may have to be outrightly scrapped or rescheduled to next year.

“I admit that I can’t hit the target for this year. But we can clearly see the increase in our collection,” said City Treasurer Diwa Cuevas.

Data provided by the  City Treasurer’s Office said they have so far collected P4.56 billion in taxes and revenues from the city’s economic enterprises and extra ordinary receipts as of November which is P1.24 billion off its target.

The collected amount includes real property tax collection of P743,580,719.99; business taxes of P1,222,944,670.28; and regulatory fees collected by the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management (Citom), City Health Department and the Cebu City Environmental Sanitation and Enhancement Team (Ceset) of P1,367,000.

The city government also generated P92,928,412.61 from its economic enterprises including the city’s markets, slaughterhouse and the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC).

Around P1 billion was also collected from the Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor, Slum Improvement and Rehabilitation program and the payments of SM Prime Holdings and Filinvest for the properties they acquired at the South Road Properties.

“For the month of December, we are still expecting an additional of P50 million from real property taxes, and P113 million as the city’s Internal Revenue Allotment for the month. Even with this, the target still can’t be reached but at least it’s not that big,” Cuevas explained.

The executive department has submitted an P18.9 billion annual budget for 2015. Around half of the amount is expected to be sourced from selling other lots at the SRP.

In the previous years, the CTO has also failed to hit its target collection.

Based on the annual comparative collection report of the CTO, the city only collected P4.74 billion last year but the target was P6.4 billion.

In 2012, the city targeted a revenue collection of P5.2 billion but only collected P4.12 billion. In 2011, the city’s target revenue was P4.6 billion but they only collected P4.1 billion.

However, in 2010, the city exceeded its target collection of P3.1 billion. They were able to collect P4.5 billion.