SUPPORT for the embattled tourism sector is pouring in, with a Cabinet secretary, lawmaker, and former tourism secretary pushing to keep the P10-billion allocation for the sector’s working capital loans, instead of following House leaders’ stand of using it for tourism infrastructure and allocating it to the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza).
“To me this is nothing but another shameless and brazen exercise to embed pork barrel in Bayanihan Act 2,” declared former Tourism Secretary Narzalina Lim on her Facebook page. “The tourism industry does not need tourism infrastructure at this time when destinations are closed. Before the pandemic, the DOT [Department of Tourism] had already identified key infrastructure needed by tourist destinations and the funding for these,” she added.
House Bill 6953, the lower chamber’s version of the Bayanihan 2 bill, also allocates P100 million to subsidize and train tour guides. Of this, Lim said, “P100 million for training tour guides? There are no tours. What the industry needs is to remove tourism enterprises from life support.”
She urged the public to be vigilant, now that the bicameral conference committee is trying to reconcile HB 6953 with Senate Bill 1564, which had originally allocated the P10 billion for loans to tourism enterprises, through government financial institutions.
The Bayanihan 2 bills provide funding appropriations to several government agencies and meant to be used to stimulate the economy, which contracted 16.5 percent in second quarter of the year due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
In a tweet late Thursday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. agreed with Rep. Rufus Rodriguez to give the P10-billion aid in Bayanihan 2 to the tourism sector, and not to Tieza. “You’re so right Rufus,” said Locsin, “It should go to the Department of Tourism to revive jobs lost. Putting it in infrastructure is a recipe for stealing.”
On Thursday, Rodriguez, of the Second District of Cagayan de Oro, said the tourism sector does not need infrastructure right now, “but [rather] direct assistance to stakeholders in the tourism industry directly hit by Covid-19.”
He added in a news statement, the tourism workers have been out of work since March and have to be given priority in fund allocation, “not to more road projects leading to faraway tourist destinations.” Cagayan de Oro is acknowledged as the “whitewater rafting capital of the Philippines. A ferry ride will take tourists to Camiguin Island, which has white beaches and hosts the annual Lanzones Festival.
On Wednesday, tourism stakeholders all over the country spoke up against the realignment of the P10-billion tourism working capital funds to Tieza under HB 6953, as they underscored the revenue losses, and zero foreign tourist arrivals recorded by the industry since May this year. (See, “Tourism sector loses P190 billion in March-July,” in the BusinessMirror, August 13, 2020.)
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat on Thursday reiterated her appeal to the bicam committee members to give the tourism stakeholders financial assistance to help them survive. She compared the industry to a critically ill Covid patient, which can only be cured by working capital loans. (See, “Tourism ‘critical’ as 7-month receipts dip 71.5 percent,” in the BusinessMirror, August 14, 2020.)
HB 6953 was principally authored by Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte, who boasts of building up Camarines Sur as the wakeboarding capital of the Philippines.