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MANILA, Philippines – Massive exits of foreigners due to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue until the end of the year and will have a major impact on the state of the country’s tourism, the Immigration Bureau (BI) said on Monday.
Almost 2 million foreigners have left the country from January to September 2020, according to data provided by BI.
Meanwhile, the country only experienced an influx of 1.5 million foreigners, most of whom arrived before travel restrictions during the same period.
“In 2020, due to the pandemic, for the first time, we have seen more departures of foreigners than arrivals,” Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said in a statement.
Morente said that these outings will have a great impact despite the government’s commitment to tourism.
“The government had taken important steps in improving tourism, however, this pandemic proved to counteract all previous efforts,” said the commissioner.
“The areas that were once booming with foreign tourists, workers or students are now empty. We hope that little by little the confidence of foreigners will be renewed to visit our country, invest here, work here or study here while we work to combat this pandemic, “he said.
According to BI data, Korean citizens topped the list of departures with 400,000 departures; followed by US and Chinese citizens with 300,000 and Japanese with more than 166,000 departures.
Morente said that 188,517 Chinese have arrived in the country from January to September. Meanwhile, 292,669 Chinese citizens have departed during the same period.
This leaves the country with fewer than 500,000 Chinese citizens in total as of mid-September, according to BI data.
“We hope that Covid-19 will be resolved soon, so that we can reactivate the tourism economy that was severely affected by this pandemic,” Morente said. – Zac Sarao, apprentice
EDV
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