President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. announced last week he would review Executive Order No. 138 issued on June 2021 directing full devolution of certain functions of the national government, as ordered by the Supreme Court in the Garcia-Mandanas case.

The SC granted in 2018 and reaffirmed a year later the petitions of former Bataan Governor Enrique “Tet” Garcia and Batangas Gov. Hermilando Mandanas which asked that the local governments’ Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), now known as National Tax allotment, should come from the BIR and Bureau of Customs collection of import duties and other taxes. Marcos has said he would look into the matter immediately and study the case well.

“Because on paper it looks okay but the net effect in many places is that there is a decreasing of the funds that the LGUs can use,” he explained. Bataan Gov. Joet Garcia earlier questioned how the government is circumventing the spirit of the Supreme Court’s ruling on IRA.

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