Tourism dev't plan a rehash of the old one?

A good friend from Manila called me, but he wanted me not to reveal him as my source that Secretary Alberto Lim of the Department of Tourism (DOT) had apparently previewed and presented the Philippine Tourism Plan for 2011-2016. In that supposedly new plan, the planned forecast on tourist arrivals would increase from the current three million arrivals to 6.3 million inbound tourists augmented by 32 million domestic tourists. Sounds nice and I’m sure that these plans and figures could form part of President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III’s State of the Nation Address by month’s end.

My friend is an insider in the tourism industry who told me without mincing words that the DOT’s new Tourism Development Plan was, in truth, nothing but a rehash of the previous tourism development plans that were already put in place from the Ramos administration up to the time of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In short, anyone could simply copy the previous tourism plan and create a new one out of it, by polishing it a bit.

But rather than using our own homegrown and very experienced think-tank within the DOT, Secretary Lim instead got the Indra consulting firm to do this job. My friend told me that Indra, which has offices in 30 countries, including the Philippines, is into a lot of things from health care, insurance, transportation and traffic to public administration, etc., except tourism!

Secretary Lim could very well consult the stakeholders in the Tourism Congress, but he doesn’t want to deal with the private sector because of his refusal to recognize Republic Act 9593 or the Tourism Act of 2009. Hence the people behind the Tourism Congress tried to block his appointment in the Commission on Appointments (CA), but somehow because of the backing of his friends in the Makati Business Club, he breezed through the CA. 

Because of this bad blood between him and the tourism stakeholders, Secretary Lim avoids consulting them and instead used a consulting firm that has no previous tourism record. Hence, Indra is merely trying to do a rehash of the previous tourism development program. 

I also gathered that the Indra study, as presented to the DOT secretary, cost us taxpayers more than P20 million bucks! Shades of Pilipinas Kay Ganda!? I called a few stakeholders in the tourism industry here in Cebu and they have not even heard of this consultancy firm called Indra. I was told that the “new” study is so thick; he doesn’t believe that President P-Noy would even care to study it or if he does, he won’t understand it anyway. By the way, pundits here strongly believe that Secretary Lim is one of the Cabinet secretaries whom the President alluded to as giving him headaches, which was headlined in The Philippine STAR a month ago.

Talking about tourism issues, I’m sure that the Indra consulting firm did not even care to look at the case of one of Cebu’s top golf courses, the famous Kang-Irag Golf Course up in the mountains of Busay, which was originally sequestered from Marcos cronies 25 years go and operated by the Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) that later hatched a deal with the Gotesco Group (of Jose Go of Orient Bank fame) that was the subject of so many columns in this corner for most of the Ramos presidency.

The Kang-Irag Golf Course was designed by Black Knight International of that famous South African golfer Gary Player whom I met several times in Cebu and I even played a round of golf with him. This golf course was 85 percent complete, except for cart paths and a clubhouse. But the golf course was very playable and in fact, I still have a photograph of the last time I played in Kang-Irag with my golf buddies, including Sen. Sergio “Serge” Osmeña III.

When Gotesco bagged the deal from the PTA, we asked them to work first on the front nine and then after finishing that, they could work on the back nine. But they didn’t listen. They bulldozed the entire golf course and tried to build a nine-hole course, but when their funds dried out we Cebuanos were left with nothing to play in. There is no doubt that the deal hatched by the PTA and Gotesco was totally disadvantageous to the government. But no one has been criminally charged for the destruction of Cebu City’s third golf course. It makes you wonder if ever the Kang-Irag Golf Course could be resurrected after its case has languished for so long in a Makati court.

President P-Noy should be warned not to use this rehashed tourism study because it might embarrass him as it was not done through consultations with the tourism industry players. One pledge that President P-Noy gave during the campaign was that his government would be one of consultation. Rather than unite the tourism insiders, Secretary Lim has only caused antagonism with the private sector. If President P-Noy would like to do the tourism industry a huge favor, he ought to sack his non-performing DOT secretary, whose only claim to fame was convincing P-Noy to sign that stupid open-skies policy.

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