‘MARINA’s low collection of tonnage fees due to lack of records, monitoring’ — COA

‘MARINA’s low collection of tonnage fees due to lack of records, monitoring’ — COA
Czarina Nicole Ong Ki September 12, 2022 https://mb.com.ph/2022/09/12/marinas-low-collection-of-tonnage-feesdue-t...

The Commission on Audit (COA) has pointed to alleged lack of records and monitoring for the low collection of Annual Tonnage Fees (ATF) by the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) from water transport utilities and other maritime enterprises in 2019 and prior fiscal years.

In MARINA’s central office, COA in its audit report said the total ATF collections in calendar years 2020 and 2021 amounted to P48,457,124.02. It said that of the amount, P2,982,857.75 or 6.16 percent was for ATF for years 2010 to 2017.

COA said that although the collections were supported with the required authority to accept payment (ATAP), the “verification of the propriety and correctness of the amounts collected could not be done due to lack of records.”

These records should include the schedules of receivables and Masterlist of Registered Domestic Vessels detailing the names of operators or companies, number of registered units, and the corresponding gross tonnages.

COA said it discovered that P4,288,164 or 8.85 percent of the total amount collected were from operators of domestic vessels that were not among those listed in the submitted masterlists for fiscal years 2018 to 2020.

It also said there were vessels that are non-operational but are still included in the masterlists maintained by MARINA. They could not be deleted from the registry yet until an application for deletion is filed, it noted.

MARINA, an attached agency of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), is mandated by Section 2(c) of Presidential Decree No. 474 to “provide for the effective supervision, regulation, and rationalization of the organizational management, ownership, and operations of all water transport utilities and other maritime enterprises,” COA said.

It said that MARINA has the capacity to formulate or implement policies and guidelines it sees fit to achieve the agency’s objectives, and one such means is the collection of ATF or the annual payment calculated on the gross tonnage of the Philippine-registered ships in the domestic trade.

The management of MARINA told the COA that they are already drafting a circular to revise its policy on delisting and deletion of domestic vehicles.

“Management admitted that it has no updated masterlists of registered domestic vessels especially those pertaining to prior years but has already started the partial implementation of the Integrated Domestic Shipping Information System which has an objective of real time updates online,” the audit report stated.

“MARINA believed and committed that through its implementation, the inventory system of domestic shipping vessels will be updated, accurate, and complete by year 2023,” it added.