SENATOR Richard Gordon blew up during the Department of Tourism (DOT) budget hearing after finding out that the biggest bulk of foreign retirees in the Philippines were from mainland China.
Data provided by the Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) showed there were 27,678 mainland Chinese who had availed themselves of the Special Resident Retiree’s Visa (SRRV) in the Philippines; followed by South Koreans at 14,144; Indians 6,120; Taiwanese 4,851; Japanese 4,016; Americans 3,704; Chinese from Hong Kong 1,870; British 1,595; Germans 792; Australians 752; and other nationalities 4,498. PRA is an attached agency of the DOT.
“That’s dangerous!” exclaimed Gordon, after finding out that the minimum age of mainland Chinese retirees was 35 years old, and that the minimum requirement for their retirement here is an investment of $50,000, just enough to purchase a condominium unit. “35 [years old] is too young!” he exclaimed, and stressed, “27,000 [people] is equivalent to 27 [military] regiments.”
He noted that before World War II, there were Japanese sleeper agents in the Philippines who had posed as construction workers. “This is now a national security issue,” he remarked, referencing Manila’s soft diplomatic policy toward Beijing.
The lawmaker has been critical of the Chinese vessels illegally fishing in Philippine waters, and the increasing number of illegal Chinese workers in POGOs, whom he had accused of spying for Beijing.
Prior to Gordon’s outburst, Senator Nancy Binay, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Tourism, had expressed concern about the large bulk of mainland Chinese retirees. “Do you have the budget to monitor that these retirees aren’t illegally working in POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators)?” she asked PRA vice chair and CEO/General Manager Bienvenido K. Chy.
But Chy could not explain why the Chinese retirees were very young, stressing the SRRV policy was already in place when he was appointed to his post. This infuriated Gordon even further and said, “That’s not an excuse!” Chy, a former head of the Bureau of Immigration’s Legal Division, is a close friend of President Duterte.
Gordon stressed, retirees are usually “between 50 and 60 years old,” and strongly suggested to Chy to “woo” more retirees from Taiwan, Korean, Japanese, Australia, and the United States. PRA’s budget is funded from the collections of fees and deposits paid by retirees, as well as interest on those bank deposits.
Maria Anthonette Velasco-Allones, COO of the Tourism Promotions Board, had promised the ballistic Gordon that they would share information on the markets of possible foreign retirees with the PRA, so the latter could revamp its retirement policy. The TPB is the marketing arm of the DOT.
Bayanihan 2 aid
Earlier, several senators including Binay, Minority Floor Leader Franklin Drilon, Joel Villanueva, and Imee Marcos, had expressed disappointment that funds under the Bayanihan 2 Act were still not released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to any government agencies, despite the law’s expiration by the end of the year.
The Senate had been instrumental in allocating P10 billion in stimulus funds for the tourism sector, despite House lawmakers insisting these be channeled to infrastructure instead. The senators had asked the DOT for an update on the P6-billion working capital funds to be channeled through SB Corp. for micro, small, and medium tourism enterprises, the P3-billion social amelioration funds through the Department of Labor and Employment, and the P1-billion tourism infrastructure funds to be coursed through the Department of Public Works and Highways.
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat told them, however, while the programs for these allocations have already been prepared and documents submitted to the respective government agencies, the Bayanihan 2 funds “have not yet been released [to them].”
Drilon noted the DBM had not released the Bayanihan 2 funds, “because there are no funds to release.” Like his colleagues, he emphasized the need to prioritize funds for the DOT due to the large contribution of tourism to the local economy. However, the DBM had put a cap on DOT’s budget for 2021 at P3.52 billion.
(See, “DOT to revise plan as Covid-19 upends targets,” in the BusinessMirror, Aug. 31, 2020.)
1 comment
Sounds like a Racist Idiot