road users' tax

CV's share of road users' tax sought
The Freeman 09/15/2005 (this is one of the stories i wrote yesterday)

The Development Administration Committee of the Regional Development Council wants to know where some of the "road users' tax," that is supposed to be used for development projects for Region 7 for this year went, has gone.

Valeriano Avila, chairman of the committee said the region has been collecting millions of motor vehicle users' charge, popularly known as road users' tax, but nothing has been given to the region. Avila's committee is asking for an update of this from the national treasury.

With this, the committee yesterday came up with a mass motion seeking to study the structure of the Road Board, an attached agency of the Department of Public Works and Highways that handles the fund. It is also asking the board to explain where the other part of the allocation for Central Visayas is.

Republic Act 8794, which was approved during the term of former president Joseph Estrada, provides imposition of MVUC on owners of all types of motor vehicles. The revenues collected from the MVUC would be used exclusively for the national and provincial road maintenance and improvement of drainage, installation of traffic lights and road safety devices, and for air pollution control.

The law mandates the Land Transportation Office to collect MVUC during the annual registration and the overloading penalties of motor vehicles. It also said the revenues generated from the MVUC and overloading penalties are deposited in the national treasury.

City and provincial governments, which are in the frontlines of the implementation of the law is also entitled to receive part of the fund through the Special Local Road Fund, which would be based on the number of vehicles and size of the road network under their jurisdictions.

When it comes to regional and district allocations of the Special Road Support Fund, the Road Board would determine how much their allocations would be.

But for this year, the DAC secretariat, in a report during the committee meeting yesterday said the board has released P137,195,689 to DPWH 7 under the SRSuF and P340,941.40 to Bayawan City in Negros Oriental under the Special Local Road Fund.

Aside from Bayawan City, the secretariat, citing the data from DPWH 7, said that no other LGU in the region had received an allocation from the Road Board.

"Why is it that Cebu City and the province were not given allocations? Ang Bayawan City pa nuon. The money is collected here but it is not spent here. That's how unfair the whole situation is," Avila said.

The DAC secretariat said that as of 2004, the region had collected P559,653,066 in MVUC from motor vehicle owners and drivers, which represents 8.4 percent of the total MVUC in the whole country. Of the provinces in the region, Cebu has the highest collection last year with P435,855,583, or 77.88 percent of the region's total collections.

For overloading, Region 7 was only able to collect P13,350 last year, which represents 0.28 percent of the total overloading penalty collections of the country.

Road users' tax became the talk of the town at the height of the impeachment against President Arroyo last month after some of the opposition congressmen accused her administration for using the fund as reward for the legislators to drop the complaint.

To erase speculations on how the fund is being spent, the President ordered the Department of Budget and Management to scrap the P2.2 billion allocation that is supposed to be incorporated in the P1.05 trillion proposed budget for 2006. (end)