THE number of foreign and local tourists visiting Central Mindanao has dropped because of the renewed fighting between government forces and guerrillas from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which is scaring away the visitors.

The number of tourists has dropped by 8 percent in the first half of the year, which is felt region-wide, particularly in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani provinces and the cities of General Santos, Tacurong, Kidapawan and Cotabato. 

Only 293,937 came to the region from January to June this year, down from 319,508 in the same period last year, according to reports from the National Economic and Development Authority.

The figure for the first half of the year consisted of 292,675 local tourists and 1,262 foreign tourists. By comparison, in the same period last year, local tourists numbered 317,277 while foreign tourists consisted of 2,231. 

“The armed conflict in the Mindanao region is largely to blame for the decline in tourist arrivals as the region’s image suffered from the bad publicity,” said Ma. Lourdes D. Lim, acting chairperson of the Regional Development Council. Because of the renewed hostilities, some foreign countries issued travel advisories discouraging their nationals from traveling to Mindanao. 

“Advisories of embassies banning the travel of their nationals in Mindanao areas caused alarm, especially in Region 12, where the unstable peace and order condition caused a drop of 43 percent in number of foreign visitors to the area,” the Neda report said.

Lim has urged the members of the Regional Development Council composed of heads of national government line agencies, local government chiefs and private-sector representatives to counter the negative publicity in Mindanao in order to lure back the foreign tourists.

It was proposed in a recent council meeting that before the end of this year, a tourism summit be held in Mindanao to resolve the problem.

Hostilities broke out in Central Mindanao between the MILF rebels and the government forces when the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) between the government and the MILF was stopped by the Supreme Court last September. 

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THE number of foreign and local tourists visiting Central Mindanao has dropped because of the renewed fighting between government forces and guerrillas from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which is scaring away the visitors.