The Fiscal Incentives Review Board said it has sent letters to the investment promotion agencies holding incomplete information on their locators, in a bid to bring them into compliance with reporting rules set by the CREATE law. READ:
Finance Assistant Secretary Juvy C. Danofrata, who heads the FIRB Secretariat, said in a statement: “The Secretariat has already sent a follow-up letter signed by the Chairman of the FIRB and Finance Secretary, Carlos G. Dominguez III, to each of these IPAs that had incomplete and missing submissions… All IPAs should understand that these reports we require are important for the FIRB to fulfill its oversight functions on the administration and grant of tax incentives.
The information required of IPAs includes the lists of their registered business enterprises, the tax incentives they are entitled to, IPA-approved projects involving investment capital of P1 billion or less, and registered Information Technology and Business Process Management companies that have work-from-home arrangements.
The DoF said that PEZA has other pending submissions, including its cost-benefit analyses for its investments, tax incentives granted, and a report on technology transferred by its locators, which it also failed to submit last year. PEZA was singled out last week for incomplete data, to which Ms. Plaza replied that the FIRB’s statement was “erroneous, misleading and intend to embarrass PEZA as an IPA.”