Philippine government plans to open all foreign visitors by end of April

The Philippines is considering the possibility of opening its borders to all foreign tourists by April, and the country currently only accepts tourists from visa-free countries, Philippine Tourism Department (DOT) Minister Buyat (Bernadette Romulo-Puyat) said Thursday.

Buyat said that the Philippine Ministry of Tourism is optimistic that the government will approve the acceptance of foreign tourists from all countries next month.

The Philippines began accepting tourists from 157 visa-free countries last month. From February 10 to March 8, the Philippine government has welcomed 73 or 178 tourists.

Buyat added: "The reason why we started with visa-free countries is also based on the proposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We want to open our borders at 1.1 point and test our capabilities. Now, the Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is ready to open consular services around the world, so we hope to open all foreign citizens to the country by the end of April."

So far, most tourists have come from the United States, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Japan, Germany and Vietnam.

All inbound passengers must produce a negative RT-PCR of the new coronary nucleic acid test within 48 hours and provide a vaccination certificate before entering the Philippines.

At the same time, the Philippine government is also considering relaxing the testing requirements, allowing passengers to submit negative reports of the new crown antigen test within 24 hours.

Buyat pointed out that the tourism industry is still mainly driven by the domestic tourism industry. In 2019, the number of domestic tourism tourists was 0.11 billion, while the number of foreign tourists was 8.26 million.