The Bureau of Local Government Finance recognized Davao City as one of the top performing cities in the country on Local Source Revenues in Nominal Terms for the Fiscal Year 2023.
Based on the Regional Memorandum Circular No. 30-2024 that the Department of Finance released, the city has ranked first among regions outside the National Capital Region (NCR) with total local revenue of 6,672.89.
The Top 10 cities on Local Source Revenues in Nominal Terms are the cities of Quezon, Makati, Taguig, Pasig, Manila, Parañaque, Pasay, Davao, Madaluyong, and Cebu City.
Davao City was ranked 8th while Cebu City placed 10th.
“The city is grateful for the recognition vested by the Bureau of Local Government Finance since Davao City was awarded as one of the Top 10 Cities on Local Source Revenues in Nominal Terms. It is not only limited in Region XI but it covers all cities in the Philippines, whereby Davao City is Top 8 among all cities,” Atty. Lawrence Bantiding, Officer-in-Charge of the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO), said in an interview.
“This only entails that business owners and the citizens of Davao City are compliant in paying their taxes and we appreciate that because of this, Davao City has continued to be part of the top performing local government units,” he added.
The city collected P12,830,654,273.87 in 2023, including the National Tax Allotment of P7,010,9995,356.
The CTO has the highest contribution to the city’s total collection as it is the office mandated to collect taxes and fees on behalf of the city.
Bantiding said that a big chunk of the total collection is from business taxes and real property taxes.
These collections were under the CTO’s partner agencies, the Business Bureau and the City Assessor’s Office, that responsible to regulate compliance of business establishments and property owners ensuring that businesses operating in the city have permits and all properties are included in the city’s real property tax assessment roll.
As of October 2024, the CTO has collected at least P11,878,152,512.24.
Bantiding bared that this year’s collection is 4.52 percent higher than the same period of last year.
“Since our target for this year is P12,731,143,382, it means that the city has already accomplished 93.90 percent of our target collection for the year as of October 2024,” he said.
Bantiding also said that based on the data, the city has already recovered from the pandemic.
He said that since 2020, there has already been a substantial increase in the city’s collection. Business establishments had already declared higher amounts of gross sales or receipts.
“In 2020, the city had accomplished 100.29 percent of the target which is understandable since it was a difficult time for our business establishments given the pandemic. However, in 2023, we were able to reach 108.31 percent of our target, almost the same as our accomplishment in 2019 which was 108.58 percent,” Bantiding said.
Currently, the CTO is preparing for the 2025 Business Permit One-Stop Shop (BPOSS). The office along with the Business Bureau and other concerned agencies will establish processing locations in different districts in the city to ease the processing of business permits.
Some 50,300 taxpayers are expected to process their permits during the renewal period. CIO
