By BusinessWorld
The Philippines must keep pace with the rest of the region in offering an attractive shopping experience to visitors, an appeal than can be enhanced with value-added tax (VAT) refunds, the retail industry said.
Philippine Retailers Association (PRA) President Roberto S. Claudio said the incentives to foreign shoppers proposed in Senate Bill (SB) No. 2415 promise a significant boost to tourism, and downplayed an economist’s view that visitors assign little importance to shopping here.
“Our tourism program must not only focus on the tourist experience in the Philippines. We must first offer attractive incentives to make them choose the Philippines as their choice of destination,” Mr. Claudio said via Viber.
“Because we are the only Asian country that does not offer a tax refund for tourist schemes, we suffer from the fewest tourist arrivals compared to all other Asian countries when it comes to attracting tourists, who all seem to love shopping when they are abroad,” he added.
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