BI 1st semester income exceeds billion-peso mark

MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Immigration (BI) on Monday reported that it has posted a record income as it breached its billion-peso target for the first six months of the year. In a statement, Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said the agency’s revenue has totaled to P1.015 billion from January to June – the first time in history that the agency’s first semester income exceeded the billion-peso mark. Libanan said the revenue in the first half of the year was P269.7-million or 36-percent more than the targetted P745.7 million for the period, and P204.8-million or 25-percent higher than the P810.4 million earned in the same period last year. With this development, the BI is just P456.5-million short of meeting its target of P1.47 billion for 2008, Libanan said. Libanan added they were surprised of the increase in income even if they did not implement any increase in the amount of fees. He attributed the rise in revenues not only to the influx of foreigners but also on organization development programs instituted in the BI. Records showed that of the P1.015 billion earned in the first semester, P709.3 million was collected at the BI main office in Manila while P306.01 million was raised by the different immigration field offices and subports nationwide. Early this year, Libanan launched the visa-issuance-made-simple (VIMS) scheme which cut the processing time for visa applications at the bureau by an average of 58 percent. Also credited for the high income was the agency’s effort to eradicate corruption and his drive to weed out fixers who used to rake huge profits from issuing fake visas and other spurious immigration documents to their unsuspecting victims. - GMANews.TV