Visitors spent ₧168.5B in Jan-April By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo
@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror
RECORD LIFT!
Tokyo Olympian Elreen Ando breaks three Southeast Asian Games records on her way to winning gold in the women’s 59 kgs class of weightlifting on Sunday afternoon in Phnom Penh. She resets the games marks in snatch (98 kgs), clean and jerk (118 kgs) and total lift (216 kgs) for the country’s first gold medal in the sport. ROY DOMINGO
ROTARY CLUB OF MANILA JOURNALISM AWARDS
2006 National Newspaper of the Year 2011 National Newspaper of the Year 2013 Business Newspaper of the Year 2017 Business Newspaper of the Year 2019 Business Newspaper of the Year 2021 Pro Patria Award PHILIPPINE STATISTICS AUTHORITY 2018 Data Champion
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HE country’s tourism industry continues its brisk recovery this year, earning some P168.52 billion in inbound revenue from the 1.86 million foreign tourists who arrived in the first four months of the year. Data from the Department of Tourism (DOT) showed the inbound visitor receipts from January to April 2023, was just a tad shy of the P169.14 billion earned in the same period in prepandemic 2019, from 2.87 million visitor arrivals. The peso, however, depreciated to an average of P54.97 to the dollar in
the four months to April this year, compared to the P52.295 average in the same period in 2019. The expenditure of foreign tourists in the country is calculated based on the inbound arrivals extracted from the arrival and departure data provided by the Bureau of Immigration, and the monthly visitor sample surveys by the DOT of departing international travelers. Such survey shows the tourist’s average length of stay and how much they spent on accommodations, food and beverage, transport services, travel agencies and other reservation services, entertainment and recreation, shopping, and other miscellaneous items or services. The DOT did not provide the
breakdown of nationalities who spent the most during their visit in the country.
Arrivals 42% of ‘23 target
MEANWHILE, international visitor arrivals crossed the 2-million mark from January 1 to May 12 this year, or 42 percent of the 4.8-million arrivals target by the DOT for the entire year. The latest tourism data were revealed by Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco over the weekend, in a speech at the 29th Mid-Biennial Conference of the Soroptomist International of the Americas Philippines at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati. See “Visitors,” A2
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Monday, May 15, 2023 Vol. 18 No. 210
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MILLIONS SANS PENSION
A ‘TICKING TIME BOMB’ T
By Samuel P. Medenilla
@sam_medenilla
Slow growth means urgent need to boost demand–Ibon
HE massive protests over the highly unpopular legislation that France passed, raising its retirement age from 62 to 64 to save its pension system, may be a window to a similar future in the Philippines, with its own “ticking time bomb” in its pension scheme. University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations (UP-SOLAIR) professor Emily Christi A. Cabegin warned of this scenario, where the government may have to spend millions of pesos to take care of thousands of informally employed workers, who are not covered by a pension scheme, once they retire. “Because of our demographic transition, there will be more elderly people in the coming years than there are now, so the government
will have to allocate more funds in order to keep them at least out of the poverty level,” Cabegin told the BusinessMirror in an interview at the sidelines of the Home-based and Informal workers forum in UP Diliman at the weekend. Currently, she said about 8 of every 10 workers are informally employed and therefore not covered by labor laws and mandated to become members of the Social Security System (SSS). See “Millions,” A2
By Andrea E. San Juan
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INTERGENERATIONAL BOND In the picturesque setting of Luneta Park, Manila, a young boy expresses his love and affection for his grandmother on Mother’s Day by sharing a spoonful of food, a heartwarming moment that captures the essence of family and togetherness. NONIE REYES
GIG ECONOMY A ‘CHALLENGE’ TO IBPAP By Andrea E. San Juan
T EXPLAINER »B4
MINDFULNESS, MEDITATION AND SELF-COMPASSION:
A CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST EXPLAINS HOW THESE SCIENCEBACKED PRACTICES CAN IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH
HE IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) said it accepts the gig economy as a “challenge” to the industry, saying it was catalyzed by the pandemic. “That was catalyzed by the fact that we can now work from home. You can’t do gig economy in your day job. And some people really don’t want to work in the office. So you know I mean it’s just an interesting result of our work flexibility. I mean, this is the new world of work,” IBPAP President Jack Madrid said recently. However, Madrid stressed that the rising talent in the freelance industry is “something that we
need to pay attention to,” adding that “it is a force that is hard to stop.” The head of the flagship organization of the Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) also advised workers in the gig economy to weigh the pros and cons of working under such set-up due to “stability” issues. “But those gig economy people also have to realize what’s the stability of that. Maybe they accepted short-term...benefits or your rights..you have to weigh that versus the flexibility of 100 percent [work from home] WFH,” Madrid said. “So you just have to weigh,” he added. The IBPAP chief added, “I think on the investor side, we need to
accept it and compete with it. On the employee side, I know [Department of Information and Communications Technology] DICT is supporting it.” Madrid said he supports the gig economy because it’s still a job and it’s still good for the country’s economy. However, he said, “I want them to also know the pros and cons of working for an unregistered company. That’s really it.” At the IT-BPM Talent Summit held last month, the top official of a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm urged the government to “level the playing field” between the gig economy and the IT-BPM industry in terms of complying with government regulations. See “Gig economy,” A2
HE 6.4-percent slowdown in growth of gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2023 underscores the “urgency” of boosting domestic demand and the economy’s supply response to spur inclusive growth, Ibon Foundation Inc. said. “The continuing deceleration in household spending from low incomes and high prices is among the biggest factors in the slowdown and is among the issues that the administration can immediately address,” Ibon said in a statement on Sunday. On Thursday, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said GDP growth reached 6.4 percent, the lowest in eight quarters when GDP growth contracted 3.8 percent in the first quarter of 2021. PSA data showed GDP growth was at 8 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 7.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Ibon pointed out the decline in the household final consumption expenditure (HFCE) for the fourth consecutive quarter at 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023, which the group said is already 3.7 percentage points slower than the 10-percent rate upon “economic reopening” in the first quarter of 2022. With this, Ibon said it is a clear sign that the purchasing power of families is “failing from soaring prices, low wages and earnings, and worsening informality and joblessness.” See “Slow growth,” A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 55.6720 n JAPAN 0.4139 n UK 69.6846 n HK 7.1052 n CHINA 8.0109 n SINGAPORE 41.8209 n AUSTRALIA 37.3058 n EU 60.7827 n KOREA 0.0418 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.8455 Source: BSP (May 12, 2023)