Naga to assume more devolved gov’t services

By Paulo DS. Papa

The Naga City government next year, 2022, will assume the some of the functions and services of the national government in terms of health, infrastructure and agriculture once the Mandanas ruling of the Supreme Court is implemented among the local government units (LGUs) throughout the country.

Councilor Salvador Del Castillo, chairperson of the agriculture committee of the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP), told Bicol Mail that the Mandanas ruling is a 2018 Philippine Supreme Court decision asserting that the bases of the computation of the internal revenue allotment (IRA) for local government units (LGUs) are erroneous, thus denying LGUs a just share of the IRA.

He said prior to the Mandanas ruling, the IRA granted by the national government to LGUs every year was computed based on the internal revenue taxes collected by Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) alone. He added the Bureau of Custom (BoC) is deputized by the BIR, thus the IRAs of LGUs shall be based on the total tax collections of the BIR and BoC.

Del Castillo said some P175 million up to P200 million will be added to the P700 million worth of IRA for the city of Naga next year because of the Mandanas ruling.

He said the services which will be devolved by the national government to the LGUs include health, infrastructure, and agriculture services.