Accounting Jobs

Enact the new Tourism Law but . . .

EARLIER this week, in Boracay President Gloria Arroyo spoke enthusiastically about the tourism industry. She said, in a report printed online by the President’s website, that tourism-generated jobs can substantially meet the employment demand in parts of the country due to the “labor intensive” nature of tourism services.

The President said tourism can provide jobs for both the “most-skilled” and the “least-skilled” people. She pointed to the example of Boracay and its luxury hotels as well as the medium and small enterprises there that were all keeping lots of people employed.

Then she brought up a job generation program of the Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA). It goes by the acronym GREET, which in full is Grassroots Entrepreneurship for Eco-Tourism.

But up to now the Tourism Act of 2009 is still waiting for the President’s signature, after it was announced that she was going to enact it soon after its passage by Congress.

Sen. Gordon predicts a ‘tourism rush’

Its main author, Sen. Richard Gordon, says “The new tourism law will challenge every Filipino to engage in a ‘tourism rush’ where all are enjoined to put their stake in new areas that can be developed and promoted as tourism destinations,” the independent senator said.

The law would provide for the establishment of Tourism Enterprise Zones (TEZ) and the creation of a Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza). A TEZ, says the law, is “any geographic area that is capable of being defined into one contiguous territory; it has historical and cultural significance, environmental beauty, or existing or potential integrated leisure facilities within its bounds or within reasonable distances from it.”

Local government together with private enterprises may apply for the establishment of a TEZ in areas suited for tourism. Within each TEZ, entrepreneurs locating there will be entitled to incentives previously given only to industrial locators.

Gordon warns that the hoped-for new tourism law he authored is not “manna from heaven”—it is instead “a challenge for Filipinos to take stock in—invest in and work on—the beauty of their homeland and the talents of their countrymen.”

“We already have everything we need to become one of the biggest tourism destinations in the world but it will not come without hard work,” Gordon said.

A former Tourism secretary, Gordon has been calling on Filipinos with an entrepreneurial bent to spot places in their home provinces that can be developed and promoted as tourism destinations. Then they could, working with their local officials, and tourism officials, prepare it for development as tourist spots.

Gordon mentions the examples of specific attractions that, with the development of tourism facilities in the localities, became world-famous Philippine tourist destinations. “Donsol in Sorsogon grew immensely after catching the eye of Whale Watchers. The Masskara Festival of Bacolod took the city and its people out of the doldrums that the decline of the sugar industry brought about,” he said. “With the Tourism Act soon to be in place, can imagine even some of our more impoverished provinces transformed into tourist havens.”

But that will come only with the Tourism Act of 2009.

More land-grabbing, displacements

Arguments are raised against the Tourism Act 2009. They have been best articulated by the Ibon Foundation, which recently issued an article titled with the warning “More Land Grabbing, More Displacement.”

Ibon warns that “with this law, land use conversion of farmlands and privatization of coastal areas will intensify. The reclassification of lands for tourism means only one thing for rural families, and this is the large-scale physical and economic displacement of farmers and fisherfolk communities.”

And the “law will reinforce various questionable issuances by the Arroyo and past governments declaring certain areas in the country as tourism zones.” In these tourism zones, Ibon points out, there are disputes about the conversion of rice lands, sugar farms, coastal areas and fishing grounds into tourism zones that displace thousands of local farmers and fisherfolk who are deprived of their usual livelihood.

Ibon also voiced arguments to show that tourism as a solution to the unemployment crisis created by the financial crisis and the economic meltdown is not reliable. It cites a paper presented in the 2008 United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) conference last year reporting “that the loss of livelihoods in agriculture through tourism and the high out-migration of locals from tourism areas indicate that tourism destroys more jobs than it creates.” For, labor statistics show that “the tourism sector employs roughly 10 percent of the labor force” but “official employment data in the agriculture sector is 35 percent, but is believed to even reach 75 percent when agriculture-related jobs are taken into account.”

Ibon also points out that “The agriculture sector’s contribution to the economy is also undoubtedly more significant at 18 percent of the country’s gross domestic product [GDP], compared to tourism’s 7 percent. A Department of Tourism study even estimated that tourism’s direct contribution to the country’s economy is only 2 percent of the GDP.”

Revive agricultural and industrial sectors

For sure, we must rebuild our damaged and thwarted agricultural and industrial bases. These are key sectors of our economy. Their infirmity—along with official corruption—cause massive poverty in the Philippines.

What to do with the Tourism Act of 2009? Enact it.

But all Filipinos must vigilantly make sure that the law’s implementing rules and regulations, and its actual implementation, do not produce the horrible effects predicted by Ibon. Tourism must not interfere with imperative and vital efforts to rebuild our agricultural and industrial sectors

Source: Manila Times