MANILA — The Philippines has no intention of limiting the entry of Chinese investors and tourists in the country despite flaring tensions between Manila and Beijing in the West Philippine Sea, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said on Wednesday.

Testy relations between the two countries worsened earlier this month after the Chinese Coast Guard axed, looted and rammed into Philippine Navy vessels inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, leaving several Filipino troops injured.

“We have no intention of restricting investments or tourists from China,” Balisacan said during the East West Center’s International Media Conference here.

“Everyone is open to come to the country as investors or as tourists,” he said.

Chinese foreign direct investments in the Philippines was at $1.89 million in the first quarter of 2024, a 73.24 percent drop from its $7-million contribution in the first three months of 2023, according to data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

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Between January and May 2024, 168,628 Chinese tourists entered the Philippines, according to data from the Department of Tourism (DOT).

This number only accounts for 6.56 percent of tourist arrivals in the first 5 months of the year, lagging behind the 682,362 South Koreans (26.56 percent) and the 403,721 Americans (15.71 percent) who entered the Philippines in the same period, data showed.

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While the Philippine economy “has been affected one way or another” by tensions in the West Philippine Sea, the decline in Chinese investments in the country cannot be “directly attribute it to that” alone as other global headwinds such as the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza have also affected world trade and economy, Balisacan said.

“Nobody is spared from these global and regional tensions,” he said.

“Our global performance could have been admittedly better if the global trade has been more favorable than it is,” he added.

The Philippines has been pushing to “improve our food security” to reduce dependence on Chinese imports, especially in the fisheries sector, the Socioeconomic chief said.

In 2021, the Philippines imported 158,088 metric tons of fish and marine products worth P12.14 billion from China, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) earlier said.

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Finance Secretary Ralph Recto has been pushing to pull down the volume of fisheries imports from China, saying that these products may have been illegally sourced from the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone.

“What we really need is a major investment, which our agricultural sector and fishery sector has been doing for decades. Hopefully this time we can get the activity burst coming in,” he said.

“Our thrust is to improve the productivity of our agricultural and fisheries resources so that even with rising population and even diminishing resources because of population pressure,” he said.

When asked when the Philippines is expected to finally wean from importing fish from Asia’s largest economy, Balisacan said: “Investing in productivity is not something that yields benefits in a year or two.”

“It is not something that we can do overnight considering the neglect the sector has received over many decades.”

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