MANILA, May 26 - The Philippines' main tax agency is hopeful of hitting its revenue target in May, even though it had collected just over half its goal over the first 25 days of the month.
Joel Tan-Torres, head of the Bureau of Internal Revenue which delivers around two-thirds of state revenue, said value-added tax collections and income tax payments this week should see the agency meets its target of 79.9 billion pesos .
"We're quite optimistic that we will be able to meet the May target," Tan-Torres said.
The BIR had collected 43.3 billion pesos as of May 25, or 54 percent of its monthly goal, Tan-Torres said. It had collected 35.7 billion pesos in the same period of 2009.
The agency, which has had to grapple with corruption, tax evasion and weak implementation of tax laws, has hit its monthly collection targets since December.
In January to April, the agency collected 265.1 billion pesos in revenue, 9 percent higher than its goal for the period.
However, increased spending and delays in the government's plans to privatise some assets led to a budget deficit of 131.6 billion pesos for the first five months of 2010.
Manila wants to limit its budget gap this year to 293.2 billion pesos or 3.6 percent of GDP, down from last year's shortfall of 298.5 billion pesos, a record in peso terms, or 3.9 percent of GDP.
