The Department of Finance (DOF) ranked Paranaque City as the fifth richest city in the country as it earned P6.3 billion in local revenue generation in 2020.
Based on the report of DOF’s Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF), Paranaque City was one of the top 10 performing provinces, cities and municipalities in local revenue generation for fiscal year 2020.
Nino Raymond Alvina, BLGF executive director, said that the Parañaque city treasurer’s office headed Dr. Anthony Pulmano surpassed the P 4.8 billion locally sourced revenue (LSR) collections in 2019 by P 1.5 billion despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paranaque’s LSR reached P6.3 billion which included the sum of real property taxes, local business tax, as well as fees and charges and receipts from economic enterprises.
Mayor Edwin Olivarez commended Pulmano for exceeding the collection target in 2020 and for the office’s excellent performance in tax collection for the past seven years.
Olivarez attributed the high revenue collection to the city’s innovations in tax collection schemes, particularly the Online Payment Facility using automated teller machine (ATM) credit and debit cards through the facilities of the UnionBank.
He noted that the continuously increasing number of local and foreign investors and other business establishments operating in the city before the pandemic has also contributed to the hefty tax haul.
For his part, Pulmano said the adoption of the online services on land tax and miscellaneous payments as part of the “new normal” helped a lot in the improvement of local tax collection in the city