Traders tell Subic execs: Explain new fees

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Businessmen here have asked the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) to justify what they described as the “questionable” and “unconstitutional” collection of environmental and tourism administrative fees.

Joel Lintag, general manager of Subic Bay Travelers Hotel, said the fees might not even be lawful.

“There’s no specific law that grants the SBMA the power to impose additional fees,” Lintag said, adding that the legal basis cited by the SBMA to collect these fees was “very vague.”

Sang Woo Lee, president of Vista Marina Hotel and Resort, said the SBMA needed to prove that it had the authority to impose such fees. He said the fees had angered Korean tourists who had “to pay if they eat, sleep or play inside the free port.”

The SBMA began collecting the fees on March 4 from visitors entering the Subic free port.

The agency has required its locators to collect P20 for every person who enters Subic’s theme parks, beaches and other tourism establishments where fixed entrance fees are charged.

The SBMA has also directed the collection of an extra P100 for every person who plays for a whole day at golf courses and an additional P100 for every room rented out per night at hotels and other accommodation facilities in the free port.

SBMA Chair Roberto Garcia said the fees were intended to mitigate the carbon footprint of tourists and visitors who enter the free port. Funding for projects or programs that would protect the environment would come from the fees, he said.

Kae Versoza, managing director of Subic Park Hotel and The Cabin Subic Hotel, said the fees “do not sit well” with them because the policy makes them pay “for some person’s trash.”

Versoza said the free port needed to establish itself as a leading tourist destination in the country and the new fees were unacceptable.

“Unlike in Venice (Italy) and the Maldives where pollution is directly related to tourism, Subic cannot justify the collection of these fees because we have fewer tourists here and water or air pollution is not directly caused by tourists,” she told the Inquirer.

She said SBMA officials should first bring in more tourists.

Versoza said the SBMA should also come up with “tangible projects” to justify the new fees. “Tourists won’t pay for something they don’t see and if they have to pay for something, then they have to see some improvement here first,” she said.

“What [SBMA officials] want is that they get the money first then build whatever they want. We need to know their solid reason because right now, the objective of collecting the new fees is vague,” she said.

But Garcia said the SBMA charter “allows us to charge whatever fees are necessary to protect the free port’s environment.”

He said he had not received any official objection to the new fees from any group of investors here, except for the collection of tax amounting to two percent from gross purchases in restaurants, wellness and massage centers, and other establishments.

“We deferred the collection of the two-percent [tariff] from gross purchases because there were issues raised about it,” he said.