Former DOT Secretary, now Senator Richard Gordon feels that the past administration has not fulfilled the statutes of the Tourism Act that he authored and passed into law in 2009.

“We will investigate why the Tourism Act (R.A. 9593) is not being adequately used; for example, tax incentives of hotels and new opportunities in tourism have not been enforced in the last 6 years,” he said during a recent membership meeting of the Quezon City Travel Agents Association,

“The incentives of the Tourism Law were never given. They allowed a company to come in. The IRR was also withdrawn and the incentives were not given,  so that was a loss for us. The reason why we give incentives (the TIEZA have been giving incentives for such a long long time) is that we have 50 million tourists just on the domestic market. We have 5.4 million international tourists. When I left tourism 12 years ago, we had 2.4 million international tourists. They just doubled it? With all their budgets and the hoopla, that’s it? I don’t know what’s going on,” he added.

The provisions of R.A. 9593 allows for tax incentives through the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority, an affiliate agency of the Department of Tourism. Incentives are given to eligible facilities and services that are directly related to tourism such as accommodations, transport facilities, MICE facilities, hotel and tourism estates, among others.

Gordon also revealed that he would make a privileged speech at the Senate while preparing to file a bill and investigating the complacency that led to the deterioration of NAIA’s airports.