Passed at tourism confab: Private sector urged to monitor resolutions

CEBU, Philippines - The private sector is encouraged to monitor the progress of the resolutions passed to the concerned government agencies after the annual Tourism Congress that was organized by the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI).

Former CCCI president Efren Valiente made this call to the tourism stakeholders, and the chamber’s tourism committee to monitor the results of the resolutions passed to the government, whether those were acted upon, or have these produced results.

The annual holding of the Tourism Congress is one of the highlights and most attended conferences of the Cebu Business Month.

However, while the private sector has been dishing out their concerns and issues that hampered the growth of tourism at least in the Southern part of the Philippines, these issues must be pushed further up and monitoring of actions from the government agencies concerned should be constantly monitored.

According to Valiente, while the “Tourism Congress” has gained credibility not only by the stakeholders from all over the Visayas, but also those from Luzon, as well as the tourism FDIs (foreign director investors), the government should be much involved in every Congress that will be initiated by the private sector.

“Same issues and concerns have been raised over the years, what is lacking is the presence of the government,” said Valiente.

On the other hand, Milagros Espina, CCCI tourism committee chairperson said that while the chamber or the committee had been able to monitor the actions taken in every resolution passed, the changed of government and leadership made it difficult for the private sector to push action of the identified issues raised by the stakeholders.

According to Espina, some concerns pointed out by the tourism stakeholders in the past had been acted upon, however, in the recent years, the change of the leadership made it difficult for the chamber to push some of the issues that were not acted upon.

This year’s chairman for the “Tourism Congress,” Edwin Ortiz said strict monitoring will be conducted after the group submits the resolution to the government, both in Local Government Units (LGUs) and the national government through the Department of Tourism (DOT).

He said before planning for the 2014 Tourism Congress, his group will evaluate what concerns that remained idle, before coming up with theme and discussion points next year.

Some of the long standing concerns of the tourism industry is the improvement of airport and seaport facilities, among others.

According to Espina, the chamber is only an advocacy body, while it has effectively identified the problems of the industry, in the end, it is still up to the government to act on these issues.

In the past, the brilliant idea of “Suroy-Suroy Sugbo”  was hatched in one of the chambers tourism congresses, which was later adopted by the Cebu Provincial government as one of its flagship programs to develop countryside tourism.

This year’s Tourism Congress picked the theme “Power Up Tourism.” /JOB (FREEMAN)