The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA; [1]) is a government-owned and controlled corporation under the Department of Transportation as an attached agency. It is responsible for the financing, management and operations of public ports throughout the Philippines, except the port of Cebu, which is under the Cebu Ports Authority.
History
Prior to the creation of PPA, port administration in the Philippines was merged with the traditional function of revenue collection of the Bureau of Customs (BOC). Port and harbor maintenance was the responsibility of the Bureau of Public Works (BPW) now Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). In the early 1970s, there were already 591 national planning, development, operations, and regulation at the national level. Around this time, the BOC had proposed to the Reorganization Committee and to Congress the creation of a separate government agency to integrate the functions of port development, operations, maintenance and cargo handling to enable the Bureau to concentrate on tax and customs duties collection. Hence, the PPA was created under Presidential Decree No. 505, which was subsequently amended by P.D. No. 857 in December 1975. The latter decree broadened the scope and functions of the PPA to facilitate the implementation of an integrated program for the planning, development, financing, operation, and maintenance of ports or port districts for the entire country. In 1978, the charter was further amended by Executive Order No. 513, the salient features of which were the granting of police authority to the PPA, the creation of a National Ports Advisory Council (NPAC) to strengthen cooperation between the government and the private sector, and the empowering of the Authority to exact reasonable administrative fines for specific violations of its rules and regulations.