DTI chief says loosening of pandemic curbs to boost summer domestic travel

THE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) expects appetite for travel to improve in time for the summer season, as the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines and easing of mobility requirements should encourage people to move around the country.

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez on Monday said most Filipinos may find it enticing to travel now that the government has unified the protocols for cross border movement. He explained the move to relax travel restrictions could boost mobility, especially among persons allowed to leave their houses.

“It will standardize to a certain extent the requirements asked by our LGUS,” Lopez said in a TV interview. “What we cannot standardize is the decision of some LGUS to still require a PCR test. At least to the other requirements, they are standardized.”

The Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) last week issued an order removing some of the requirements in traveling from one town to another. Under the new rules, local travelers are no longer mandated to get a Covid-19 test and to go on quarantine before entering a different locality.

The IATF also removed the requirement for travelers to provide a travel authority from the Joint Task Force Covid Shield, as well as a health certificate from a medical institution.

“This decision of the IATF will help mobility, especially of those allowed to travel. This is one of the measures wherein we can gradually open up the economy without shifting the country to a modified GCQ [general community quarantine],” Lopez said in a mix of English and Filipino.

“We all know that majority of our provinces are now under MGCQ, and only a few, including the national capital Region, is u nd erGCQ ,” he added.

For March, only Metro Manila and nine areas remain under the GCQ status of the government, while the rest of the country stays under modified GCQ. Lopez, as part of the economic team, is pushing for the full reopening of the economy on the argument that extending the quarantine for months may worsen both poverty and unemployment.

Further, the trade chief said he welcomes the arrival of Sinovac doses from China on Sunday, as he pins his hope that President Duterte would now consider easing the quarantine with the vaccination program under way.

“We respect his [the President’s] decision to wait for the vaccines before carrying on with the reopening of the economy,” Lopez said. “The start of the vaccine rollout today, it can only bring heightened optimism to us all.”