BI expects 12,000 tourists daily

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is expecting a daily average of over 12,000 tourist arrivals with the start of summer in the country amid loosened travel restrictions despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

During yesterday’s Laging Handa forum, BI spokesperson Dana Sandoval noted that they are seeing a continued increase in tourist arrivals since the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) reopened the country’s borders last month.

“We are seeing that this will increase little by little, and we’re expecting that it might reach 12,000 on the average per day, given this season, when we see a lot of foreign nationals may come here,” Sandoval said in English and Filipino.

The BI is prepared for the possible surge of foreign nationals, according to Sandoval, as she emphasized that they are now in full force in the deployment of airport personnel to ensure that they are able to service arriving passengers and effectively monitor their arrivals.

She said that the Bureau of Quarantine (BOQ) is designated to check health-related travel documents of foreign nationals arriving in the Philippines while the BI executes the “exclusion proceedings” of foreign nationals who will not comply with IATF requirements.

She added that the number of foreign nationals barred from entering the Philippines for non-compliance with IATF requirements has continued to decrease since the time they started accepting entry of foreign nationals from visa-free countries.

“Perhaps, for the last few weeks, only one or two (nationals are barred) on the average per day. So it’s already a big difference, and we can see that we are communicating effectively the requirements to foreign nationals who are coming to the Philippines,” Sandoval said.

In another development, the BI official warned the public against the recurrence of the so-called love scam due to loosened travel restrictions as she urged everyone to carefully check on foreign nationals they meet online before believing in them.