Senator Dick Gordon has expressed concern that Chinese retirees, mostly 35-year-olds, now compose 40 percent of the total foreign retirees in the country.
During the budget deliberation at the committee level for the Department of Tourism and its attached agencies which include the Philippine Retirement Authority, Gordon directed Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat and PRA General Manager Bienvenido Chy to submit a report on the foreign retirees in the country and on the PRA’s policies.
“I suggest Sec. Puyat, you better look into this very rapidly and give us a formal report on this.”
“I suggest Sec. Puyat, you better look into this very rapidly and give us a formal report on this,” the veteran legislator said.
“Kahit na dinatnan mo yan, you should be savvy enough to know and check kung anong ginagawa ng mga 35-year-olds na ‘yan dito. How can they retire at 35 years old? That is just too young to retire. A retiree has just finished his job and wants to spend his money and later years here in the Philippines… I’m disturbed by it,” the seasoned lawmaker told Chy.
Records show that with 27,678, Chinese nationals top foreigners who choose the Philippines for their retirement and the majority of them are just 35 years old.
“The Senate Committee on Tourism should conduct an inquiry with the aim of amending pertinent laws to attract more of the old population from other countries.”
Gordon said the Senate Committee on Tourism should conduct an inquiry with the aim of amending pertinent laws to attract more of the old population from other countries such as Japan and the United States.
Aside from the Chinese from the People’s Republic of China, the population of foreign retirees in the Philippines is comprised of Koreans (14,144), Indians (6,120), Taiwanese (4,851), Japanese (4,016), Americans (3,704), Hong Kong Chinese (1,870), Britons (1595), Germans (792), Australians (752), and other nationalities (4,498).
“The Committee on Tourism should look into this and amend this provision because retirees, as you know, retire at the average of 56 to 60, to 65 years old. To retire at 35, that’s very liberal,” the senator stressed.