As part of ongoing efforts to enhance its documentation and certification of tobacco acceptances and production, the NTA Regulation Department conducted on March 15 a virtual orientation-seminar on the systems and procedures on the DA-NTA Joint Memorandum Circular No. 001-2022.
Participants were tobacco buyers, representatives from tobacco-growing local government units, and officials and extension workers in the branch offices who are directly involved in the trading operations.
Developed by the Management Information System Division of the Corporate Planning (CorPlan) Department and in close collaboration with National Technical Committee and Joint Monitoring Team of each NTA branch office, the system will streamline the documentation of tobacco acceptances and issuances of certificate of tobacco production using global positioning system (GPS), standardized monitoring and validation form, and upgraded database.
According to Regulation Department Manager Atty. Rohbert A. Ambros, the agency is taking the next steps towards enhancing transparency in assessing growth progress of tobacco area to ensuring high-accuracy precision on the volume of tobacco production per barangay, municipality or province, to be implemented starting this 2022 trading operation.
“This method or strategy is unique to NTA and relatively new in our usual trading processes, so we need this orientation-seminar to capacitate our staff using the system and database and to inform our stakeholders how this is done,” he said.
He added, the agency is implementing the new system to ensure the effective and efficient implementation and validation in the documentation and reporting of tobacco production, pursuant to DOF-BIR-DOH-DBM-DA Joint Circular No. 001-2014. Said circular, which implements Republic Act (RA) 10351 that amended RA 7171 and 8240, mandates the Department of Agriculture and NTA to implement efficient system of documentation and reporting or tobacco production as basis for the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in the allocation of tobacco excise tax share of each tobacco-producing LGU.
According to Deputy Administrator for Support Services Benedicto M. Savellano, the enhanced system of documentation will improve excise tax collections, increase the delivery of services thru farmers’ production assistance and infrastructure projects thereby empowering the tobacco communities.
Resource persons in the orientation seminar and their topics were Engr. Felisa R. Aurellano, officer-in-charge of FTSD, and Joel Binwag of the Universal Leaf Philippines Inc. on GPS and aerial drone; Dir. Nestor C. Casela of the NTA Governing Board, on the required monitoring forms; Fortuna C. Benosa, CorPlan Manager, on database creation, storage and maintenance; and Engr. Alex L. Borje, chief of the Tobacco Leaf Regulation Division, on the specific roles of extension workers, tobacco buyers and LGUs in the implementation of the new system.
[Kathleen Bulquerin / Photos: Melanie Rapiz-Parel]