Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua on October 14, said at the Pandesal Forum of Kamuning Bakery Café in Quezon City that he hopes tourist arrivals from China shall grow from the half million last year to hit one million a year by 2017 after President Rodrigo Duterte’sOctober 18 to 21 state visit to Beijing. He said a million tourists can contribute $1 billion dollars to the Philippine economy due to average shopping bill of each Chinese tourist is at least $1,000.
Zhao said his government plans to lift its two-year-old travel warning---which he said is not a travel ban---on the Philippines during President Rodrigo Duterte’s state visit to Beijing from October 18 to 21. The travel warning was issued in September 2014 by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs a week after Philippine authorities had arrested three men allegedly plotting to bomb the Chinese embassy, businesses, and Manila's international airport.
Apart from encouraging tourism, Ambassador Zhao said President Duterte’s visit is expected to boost investments, infrastructures, trade, soft loans, joint anti-drugs efforts, donations of huge drug rehabilitation centers, fisheries and agriculture cooperation, people-to-people exchanges, freedom of navigation and ecology cooperation in the South China Sea.
Ambassador Zhao added that his government looks forward to Philippine participation in the trans-continental “One Belt, One Road” economic blueprint and in the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). He hopes the Philippines can soon ratify its being one of the 57 founding members of AIIB, which includes Britain, Germany, South Korea, France, Italy.
*This is Press Release
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