Rare and refreshing candor Amando Doronila Philippine Daily Inquirer
November 03, 2009
SIXTO ESQUIVIAS IV RESIGNED AS REVENUE commissioner on Oct. 30, two days shy of completing first year in office. He is the fifth Bureau of Internal Revenue chief appointed by President Macapagal-Aroyo in eight years, making the BIR the government office with the shortest tenure for its chiefs and with the most unstable leadership environment.
What is remarkable about Esquivias’ resignation is that he set a new tone for quitting, saying that “the BIR has a large tax collection shortfall right now, and I feel ashamed to stay.” He said he had exerted his best, but apparently it was not enough. “Resignation was the honorable thing to do.” By quitting, he added, he was making way for anyone who could do a better job of meeting the government’s tax collection targets.
Esquivias’ candor in admitting that he failed to live up to the task that fell on his shoulders on his appointment is refreshing and rare among senior civil servants. He cut clean, owned responsibility for the BIR’s tax collection performance, and didn’t blame any one or pass the buck.
There is no hint that in his one year in office, Esquivias was involved in any corruption scandal that tainted many of his predecessors. Not many Filipino senior civil servants, bureaucrats or technocrats who had stepped down have declared that they were quitting because they fell short in achieving the goals of their office and that they felt ashamed of their performance. In other cultures with more sensitive ethical standards— Japan, for example—officials who fail in their jobs commit suicide.
In some departments of our government, such as those responsible for overseeing navigational safety in our seas, responsible officials tend to stonewall in the face of a public outcry to take responsibility for sea disasters. In the maritime industry, officials who are remiss in their duties of ensuring the safety of human lives should be ashamed of their negligence and shoot themselves with revolvers.
With his resignation, Esquivias has put on the spot the ethic of the entire bureaucracy and even those in the political departments. In accepting Esquivias’ resignation, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said, “He has not performed well and he said he takes responsibility for it.”
Statistics from the Department of Finance show that the BIR revenue collection reached P557 billion from January to September. The total collection was short of the official target of P596.2 billion for the nine-month period, and much lower than the P587.9 billion collected in the same period last year.
The BIR accounts for 75 percent of the revenues collected by the national government. Because of the collection shortfall, the finance department expects the budget deficit to widen to P300 billion. Last year, the deficit stood at P68 billion, but by the end of September this year the deficit was already P237.5 billion.
The government has blamed the revenue shortfalls on widespread tax evasion, corruption and inefficient tax administration, plus the global recession that is claimed to have affected corporate and household incomes.
Last August, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves blamed external factors for the revenue shortfalls of the BIR and the Bureau of Customs. He called attention to the government’s P153.4-billion budget deficit, the P12-billion collection shortfall of the BIR, and the declining import tax revenues of the Bureau of Customs. One of the external factors was the reduced export earnings due to the impact of the recession on importing countries such as the United States, Japan and several European countries.
Last May, Esquivias and Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales came under pressure in Congress for failing to meet their collection targets. Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, chair of the House oversight committee, demanded that Esquivias and Morales be sacked if they continued to fail to meet their targets. The commissioners should be replaced if they failed to collect in the second quarter the same amount of revenues they collected for the same period last year, Suarez said. Although he conceded that the revenue shortfalls may be due to the recession, Suarez insisted that the revenue collection should at least be higher than the previous year’s.
It is not clear if such outbursts from members of Congress contributed to Esquivias’ premature resignation.
Teves has also said that he had ordered revenue and customs officials to shape up or face administrative and criminal sanctions if they were found to be remiss in their jobs.
* * *
Correction: In my Analysis last Monday, “Escudero without party and the myth of Icarus,” the concluding paragraph was lost in the process of publication. It read: “When Daedelus and Icarus were air borne, he warned his son not to fly to the sun or get too close to the sea. Icarus was overcome by giddiness. He soared higher and the wax melted. He fell into the sea, now called the Icarian Sea in memory of his folly.”
