Bacolod City collected P692 million in real property taxes (RPT) in 2020, Acting City Treasurer Arlene Memoria informed Mayor Evelio Leonardia.
This was only P1.9 million short of the RPT collections in 2019, she said in a press release from the Bacolod Public Information Office today, February 3.
“We are grateful that Bacolodnons continued to remit their RPT payments in 2020 despite the lockdowns then and the intermittent closure of the Real Estate Tax Division of the City Treasurer’s Office when several employees there tested positive for the virus”, Leonardia said.
“This act of remitting their RPT payments, despite COVID-19, only goes to show the civic spirit of these Bacolodnons, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts,” the mayor said.
Leonardia also added that they were expecting a bigger drop in the 2020 RPT collections because of the pandemic.
“To see it fall short by only P1.9 million against the 2019 collections is a clear sign that Bacolodnons understood how important their RPT payments were in helping their local government to provide them the essential services they needed during this pandemic,” Leonardia said.
“We hope they will continue to remit these RPT payments in 2021 and even to settle their tax arrears, if any, so that we will have more funds in our fight against COVID-19 this year and to quickly recover the momentum in our economic thrusts once COVID is behind us,” he said.*