Mayor Edwin Olivarez delivered his final State of the City Address (SOCAD) as mayor during Paranaque City's 24th cityhood anniversary on Sunday, Feb. 13.
Olivarez reported that when he assumed as city chief executive, the city government was facing a P4 billion debt from the Land Bank of the Philippines in 2013.
He said a meeting with the City Council was held to come up with a solution by granting tax amnesty to all the real property owners to encourage them to pay their taxes without penalties and surcharges.
The mayor reported that the collection of the city increased because of the tax amnesty given to the real property owners.
Aside from the tax amnesty, Olivarez said the city government and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to formalize tax collection at the Entertainment City.
Olivarez said the city government can collect around P1-billion yearly from the Entertainment City on traffic management, garbage collection, and police services.
He said that tax collection from real property in 2021 reached P3.2 billion.
The mayor thanked City Treasurer Anthony Pulmano for generating savings of P300 million in 2019. In 2020, it reached P1.6 billion. For this year, the city government generated savings of P2.1 billion earning.
Olivarez said that because of this, the city was recognized by the Department of Finance and the Bureau of Local Government Finance as Top 5 among all the cities in the Philippines based on the 2020 year-on-year growth in locally sourced revenues.
Paranaque City was also recognized as the Top 5 richest city in 2020, Top 2 among all the local government units in the National Capital Region (NCR), Top 2 richest in the NCR, and Top 6 among all the cities in the Philippines based on the 2019 highest nominal locally sourced revenue.
He said the city government also launched the 3S program (speedy transaction, simple process, and service efficiency) to shorten the processing of business permits from 17 to seven steps.
By shortening the steps in the processing of business permits, Olivarez said the Business Permit and Licensing Office (BPLO) under Atty. Melanie Soriano-Malaya was able to increase the number of business owners who registered.
The city government launched the bar code system for the immediate processing of business document and project ELO 2.0 (express lane operation), a system that will help ensure that new applications and renewals of business permits will only take three days or less.
Malaya reported the BPLO increased its business tax collection to P3.6-billion for the year 2021 from P935-million in 2013.
Aside from easy application, renewal, payment, assessment of businesses permits process online, the City Council approved an ordinance granting amnesty on penalties, surcharges, and interest incurred on unpaid business taxes and certain fees due within the period of March 2020 until December 31, 2021..