Is RP still open for business or not?

There’s a serious drop this year in foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the Philippines by as much as 56.3 percent from January to August as compared to a year ago, according to reports from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), and you can pin the blame on this on many factors… high prices of oil and construction materials, the food security scare and perhaps the best reason of all, the global financial meltdown. This means the Philippine government will just have to look elsewhere to fill the gaps so we can lure other investors into the country and convince them to stay.

This means that we should look for more investments in the tourism industry. With the global economic turmoil plaguing most of the rich Western nations, the advice given to the delegates to the 6th International Tourism Forum for Parliamentarians and Local Authorities under the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) last Oct. 21-25 at the fabulous Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa, is to focus on our particular strengths and for the Philippines, we are strong in tourism.

Cebuanos were proud that Cebu played host to this World Tourism Forum, as the delegates were very high-profile tourists, who were amazed at the way Cebuanos showed Filipino hospitality. The message that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) gave as keynote speaker in that international forum was, “Tourism can be a tool to fight poverty… that tourism can create more jobs and opportunities where there were none before.”

She cited a new program dubbed Grassroots Entrepreneurship for Eco-Tourism (GREET), which is a community-based tourism initiative for the countryside, which Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia, in all fairness to her, already adopted during her first term as governor. It is her backbone “Suroy-Suroy” tourism program, which was extremely successful that it became a victim of its own success because tourists would go to many new places in Cebu only to find out that these were sadly lacking in facilities.

Indeed, putting your investment money in tourism facilities is the step in the right direction, assuring the tourism industry that we can weather the problems in this financially troubled world. Enter the Supreme Court, in a decision penned by Associate Justice Ruben Reyes that reversed a Court of Appeals decision last Oct. 8 where they voted 12-0 declaring Boracay Island part of the public domain… that private landowners cannot get titles to the properties they are occupying now. The only hope for the landowners of Boracay, from the five-star hotels down to the lowly farmers who are no longer eligible to have titles to their tax declaration, is that their occupation of the land allows them to use it.

The Boracay decision reminds me of the Supreme Court decision on Jan. 31, 2002 on the case of Alonso vs. the Cebu Country Club where the Supreme Court said, “In lieu thereof, we dismiss the complaint and counterclaim of the parties in Civil Case No. CEB 12926 of the trial court. We declare that Lot No. 727 D-2 of the Banilad Friar Lands Estate covered by Original Certificate of Title Nos. 251 and 253 legally belongs to the Government of the Philippines.” Wow! Two quarreling parties go to court and a third party who is not a litigant in this case won the property?

But this issue was finally resolved this year when last April Solicitor-General Agnes Devanadera declared that her office “no longer intends to execute the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that Lot 727 or a portion of the Banilad Friar Lands Estate contested by Cebu Country Club and the Alonso family belongs to the government.” If the government was no longer interested in this property it was because they knew that months later Republic Act 9443 authored by Rep. Raul del Mar would be signed into law, which cured the problem. After all the years, landowners could claim acquisitive prescription on their lands. So there was a happy ending here.

However, because of the High Court’s decision on Boracay, suddenly Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza put a stop to the development of tourism facilities in Boracay for environmental reasons. It’s bad enough that Boracay has land problems, but the DENR makes things worse for those who already invested there like the P1-billion Shangri-La Resort, which is due to open hopefully this year.

While Atienza is saying that they are not seizing properties there, but the fact that they are preventing new developments means they are literally putting on hold any more developments on this tourist paradise. If Atienza’s boss, President Arroyo, says tourism is the ticket to rid ourselves of poverty, then he must embrace this doctrine and allow tourist facilities to open. We should show to investors that the Philippines is still open for business, or else!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.