The government has marked more than three billion liters of fuel under the fuel marking scheme, the Department of Finance (DOF) said, as part of efforts to plug tax leakages from oil smuggling and other fuel fraud.
Carlos Dominguez, DOF secretary, shared with reporters in a Viber message over the weekend the most recent update on the fuel marking activities.
Dominguez said according to the Bureau of Customs (BOC), 3.2 billion liters of fuel have already been marked as of February 14.
Specifically, 2.368 billion liters were marked by the BOC while the remaining 913 million liters were marked by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Participating companies include Unioil, Chevron, Phoenix Petroleum, Seaoil, Shell, Insular Oil, Filoil Energy, PTT, and Petron.
Also included in the list of those who participated are Warbucks Petroleum, Microdragon Petroleum (Subic), High Glory Subic International (Subic), Marubeni Philippines (Subic), Goldenshare Commercial (Subic), Jadelink (Subic), and Era1 Petroleum (Subic).
The DOF earlier said the implementation of the fuel marking scheme has resulted in higher reporting of volumes of fuel, thus the government expects to rake in at least P20 billion more with the program in place.
“This year marks the full implementation of the fuel marking program. This is the first time an administration is undertaking a fuel marking program that covers the entire archipelago.
In 2016, the estimated revenue loss for government from smuggled fuel products was between P27 billion and P44 billion,” Dominguez said during the BOC’s 118th anniversary celebration held earlier this month.
“With the full implementation of this program, we expect smuggling and misdeclaration of petroleum products to be greatly reduced, if not totally eradicated, and revenue collections to dramatically increase. This program is projected to generate an additional P20 billion in revenues,” he added.
The fuel marking activity began in October last year. Starting this month, testing of fuel in the retail side as well as enforcement actions will commence. Gasoline, diesel and kerosene found to be unmarked will be seized, and penalties will be imposed against those storing, transporting, importing or peddling unmarked fuel.
