THE plunge in travel taxes collected by the government due to the pandemic restrictions has again forced the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza) to seek a subsidy from the national government to support its maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE).
“We were allocated by DBM [Department of Budget and Management] P113,646,000 for our MOOE,” Tieza Chief Operating Officer Mark T. Lapid told the BusinessMirror. Lapid added this was the second year Tieza, a government-owned and -controlled corporation (GOCC), was allocated funds from the national government “because there were no [outbound] travels.”
According to the National Expenditure Program for 2023, Tieza was allocated a subsidy of some P186.3 million this year, and P46 million in 2021. According to a Commission on Audit report on the GOCC’s finances, Tieza’s MOOE reached some P460 million in 2021, up 16.3 percent from 2020.
Lapid stressed next year’s subsidy can only be tapped for MOOE and not the construction of tourism infrastructure projects. Formerly the Philippine Tourism Authority, Tieza was reconstituted under Republic Act 9593 (Tourism Act 2009) as a GOCC attached to the Department of Tourism (DOT) and is responsible for establishing and overseeing tourism economic zones as well as developing and supervising tourism infrastructure projects in the country.
Also, the special provisions in the NEP 2023 provides: “The Tieza is hereby authorized to use subsidy released for programs and projects in 2018-2021 to cover the additional funding requirements of activities or projects covered by the programs or sub-programs therein. Accordingly, Tieza shall prepare and work and financial plan covering the projects and activities to be funded from prior years’ subsidies subject to the endorsement of the Tieza’s board of directors, to be submitted to the DBM for approval.”
‘What about our projects?’
A number of congressmen in last week’s hearing on the budget of DOT also supported the approval of the funds for Tieza, even as a few of them followed up on the implementation of long-approved projects in their respective provinces. One of them, Negros Oriental, First District Rep. Jocelyn Sy Limkaichong, specifically followed up on the development of a tourism masterplan for Central Visayas, which costs P50 million.
Lapid assured the lawmakers that those that have already been approved by the Tieza board of directors will still push through, as travel taxes have started coming in with the resurgence in outbound travel.
“We’re optimistic that this year and the next coming year, since we’re banking on the statement of our President (Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) that there would be no more lockdown, so we’re hoping by 2023, we will be back to our pre-pandemic form. We’re still on our negative side [of travel tax collections] yet.”
He stressed: “We’ve not removed anything on our list [of projects] that have been approved by the board; we’re just waiting for funding allocation. They were just suspended simply because of lack of funding.” Outbound travelers pay a travel tax of P1,620 (economy-class ticket) and P2,700 (first-class ticket).
Earlier, the Tieza COO said many of the government firm’s projects remain suspended due to the low collection of travel taxes. He said their target collection for the year is P1.2 billion, still a far cry from the P7.2 billion they collected, prepandemic, in 2019. (See, “Tieza eyes change in Tourism Act to keep asset sale proceeds,” in the BusinessMirror, July 11, 2022.)