The stars are conspiring for the tourism industry to get the 10 billion pesos (US$206 million) lifeline it desperately needs to stay afloat.
While the Senate Bill No. 1564 or the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (dubbed “Bayanihan 2”) allotted that amount to bail out micro, small and medium tourism enterprises (MSMEs) with soft loans, the House of Representatives’ Bill No. 6953 diverted that fund to the infrastructure programmes of the Department of Tourism’s investment arm, the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA).
Bayanihan 2 was already passed in the House and Senate. It will soon undergo a bicameral conference hearing to reconcile the Senate and House versions before signing it into law.
But in an August 11 letter to house speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, TIEZA COO Pocholo Paragas declined the amount and instead appealed for the prioritising of financial assistance to the tourism industry.
“Without the direct financial support from the government, the tourism MSMEs cannot rebuild their businesses and pay for the salaries of their workers,” Paragas said.
Another ray of hope is the groundswell of public opinion against diverting the tourism fund into TIEZA’s infrastructure programmes, with government officials, politicians, lawmakers, former tourism secretaries, leaders of various industries and think tank groups, and the public in general throwing their support behind the embattled tourism sector.
At the Philippine Tourism Stakeholders Forum last week, Tourism Congress of the Philippines president Jojo Clemente said they will appeal to the bicameral committee. Tourism is on the brink and needed a lifeline urgently; infrastructure can come in later, he added.
Triple Star Travel and Tours general manager Bing Miranda lamented that tourism is considered as non-essential because many only see the hotels, tours, and glamour, but not its multiplier effect on the economy.
Stakeholders said that last year, tourism contributed to 13 per cent of the Philippines’ GDP; three trillion pesos to government coffers, and generated 5.7 million jobs directly.
Arrivals in the first seven months plunged 72.8 per cent to 1.32 million, from 4.8 million over the same period in 2019, causing a 71.5 per cent dive in tourism receipts to 81.05 billion pesos, from 284.82 billion pesos over the same period last year.
Tourism revenue from March to July was only 6.9 billion pesos, from 196 billion pesos over the same period last year, representing a whopping 190 billion pesos loss. Revenue would be much lower for the rest of the year.
Almost 70 per cent of tourism stakeholders are in the MSME category. As of April, of the more than one million registered MSMEs, 40 per cent of those which accounted for 70 per cent of the tourism workforce had already bitten the dust, according to Cesar Cruz, president of the Philippine Tour Operators Association.
Without the 10 billion pesos lifeline, Clemente questioned how jobs could be provided to the 5.7 million-strong tourism workforce when unemployment is on the rise, forcing a number of overseas Filipino workers to return to the country.
Secondary destinations are not spared. PAR Travel and Tours general manager, Pia Lourdes Partoza-Montano, said tourism sales in Davao are expected to drop by 80 to 90 per cent this year due to lack of business and that 35 per cent of travel agencies and tour operators were forced to shutter.
While the congressmen defended their preference for the 10 billion pesos to go towards tourism infrastructure, saying that the move will stimulate the economy and generate jobs, various quarters suspected that infrastructure projects are susceptible to corruption and pork barrel politics.
As former tourism secretary Narzalina Lim said: “To me, this is nothing but another shameless and brazen exercise to embed pork barrel in Bayanihan Act 2”, noting that the authors of the House bill also voted last month against renewing the franchise of ABS CBN, the oldest and largest television and broadcasting network in the country with 11,000 employees.
Lim stressed: “Vigilance is needed. We may find that the billions of pesos needed to implement Bayanihan Act 2 will go to the pockets of the unscrupulous who do not care a whit about the millions of suffering, hungry and desperate Filipinos.”
The Indonesian government is still considering whether to give Bali the green light to reopen to international visitors in September.
The travel ban on foreigners that the central government has set since April to curb the spread of coronavirus is likely not to be revoked by then, although the Bali administration has made known that the island is ready to receive international tourists from September 11.
Reopening the country to international tourists is a “very positive” move, but the government is seeking the right timing to do that, said state-owned enterprises minister Erick Thohir, who is also chairman of the national economic and Covid-19 recovery committee, during a web press conference on August 15.
He said that although Indonesia really needs foreign tourists, the government doesn’t want new Covid-19 clusters to emerge again.
According to a recent meeting among related ministers, including foreign affairs minister Retno Marsudi and coordinating minister of maritime affairs and investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, safety remained the highest priority. Although the country was striving to get its economy back on track, the government did not want to go back to square one after its painstaking efforts to stem the Covid-19 spread, shared Erick.
“The reopening of destinations to foreign tourists is still under review. The vaccine may be available early next year,” Erick said.
Meanwhile, the country’s plan to establish travel bubbles hasn’t been burst. But the government is now exploring the possibility to include only Bali – or the island along with tourist destinations in other provinces – for the travel bubble scheme aimed at reviving its tourism industry.
The decision not to open the country as a whole is still under review, according to Hari Sungkari, deputy of infrastructure and destination development at the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy.
“It could be that the travel bubble will not involve a foreign country and the whole of Indonesia. It could be country A with Bali only, or country A with Bali and another region,” he said in a web press conference. “Or the bubble could be even smaller, that is, a point-to-point (travel bubble), in which (a destination) in a foreign country is (paired) with a destination in Indonesia.”
With talks for the project still underway, Hari expects that Indonesia will reach travel bubble agreements with partner countries only by year-end.
As travel bubbles will also require travellers to adhere to health and safety protocols, Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation will give them a fast track to enter its property, The Nusa Dua in Bali, said its director of business and development, Edwin Darmasetiawan.
Besides Bali, other tourist destinations that the government will propose for the travel bubble scheme were not disclosed by Hari. Ng Sebastian, owner of Incito Vacations, expressed hopes that the government would choose smaller islands, such as Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, Belitung in Bangka Belitung Islands, and Bintan in Riau Islands.
The Covid-19 crisis has made the government’s target of attracting 18 million foreign tourists this year an impossible goal, said Hari. According to the government’s forecast, the number of foreign tourists in Indonesia will drop to around 2.8 to four million this year, from 16.1 million visitors in 2019.
Hari projects that the country would only realise its 18 million foreign tourist arrival target in 2024 or 2025, and that domestic tourism would recover to pre-pandemic levels only in 2023.