DOT receives $7.1M grant from Canada

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Tourism secured a $7.1 million grant from the Canadian International Development Agency to improve the competitiveness of the local tourism industry from 2013-2016, the state agency reported on Wednesday.

Under the program titled Asian Development Bank-CIDA Technical Assistance on Improving Competitiveness in Tourism, the DOT will be given funding to launch skills training programs for the private sector, local government units, civil society and DOT agencies. The project also includes the pilot implementation of a new accreditation system and the development of standards for service quality. DOT said the technical assistance will be piloted in Cebu, Bohol, Palawan and Davao.

The program also aims to create jobs for the local workforce, as well as to provide local government units with better capacity to attract more investments through tourism.

“While we continue to receive recognitions from global organizations and publications, the challenge for all of us in the tourism sector is to ensure that the promise of fun is complemented on the ground with competitive physical and social infrastructure: from our products to the cost of doing business and human resources. This gesture of the Government of Canada and the ADB is a recognition of the role of tourism as a key driver of economic development in the country.” Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez, Jr. said.

Jimenez added that the program will produce three outputs over a four-year period: regulatory review, service standards improvement and skills development.

“This comes at an opportune time when we need to scale up the development of tourism towards our bid of 10 million international visitor arrivals and 56.1 million domestic travellers by 2016. We should be ready to improve the tourism plant and enhance the quality of our services to ensure higher visitor satisfaction levels, which will trigger word-of-mouth marketing. Through this undertaking, the Philippines will be more competitive with the rest of the destinations in the Asia-Pacific,” he said. –Jovan Cerda (philstar.com)