DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 23 Jan) – Collection of the City Economic Enterprise (CEE) office here has fallen short of its P128-million target by 3.
6 percent, having collected only 123.
4 million.
But the biggest income earner – collection in the public markets – surpassed the P70-million target by 13.3 percent, or P79.3 million, said Reynan Librado, the CEE’s public markets coordinator, during the iSpeak forum at the City Hall today.
Collections for proceeds from the Davao City Recreation Center and Magsaysay Park also exceeded 2013 targets by 1.29 and 34.21 percent, respectively. Income from the Magsaysay Park reached P1.34 million compared to the P1-million target, while income from the DCRC marginally surpassed its P2-million target with P2.025 million.
Collections that fell short were for the Davao City Overland Transport Terminal, at P21.5 million from a target of P25 million; Sta. Ana Port at P6.1 million from a P7-million target; and slaughterhouses at P12 million from an P18-million target.
The lowest collection was from the public cemeteries at P1.2 million as against the P5-million target.
Librado defended the CEE’s collection efforts, saying this was better than the previous practice of past administrations of more relaxed collection practices.
“Ever since we intensified our collection efforts, the collection in the market for the last three months of 2013 increased,” he said.
Librado cited that in Mintal public market, there were only five payees that owed the city, compared to an average of 30 listed tenants in previous collection periods.
Librado said that their office was still discussing their collection targets for 2014.
The CEE official also said an electronic system could be on the way for the city’s income-generating agencies, where transactions could be made electronically instead of a cash-based collection system.
At the moment, the city still relies on a manual input of collection data into a logbook, he said.
Librado said that the idea had been proposed during the previous administration but was originally intended solely for public market collections.
“But we recommended to the City’s Information and Technology Center (CITC) to make the system work for all other of the city’s economic enterprise,” Librado said. “It shouldn’t take more than two years to put up a system,” he added.