TARGETING MORE RETIREMENT VISA ARRIVALS
TARGETING MORE RETIREMENT VISA ARRIVALS
When the Special Resident Retirement Visa
(SRRV) program was launched in 1985, the goal was simple and ambitious—bring in
50,000 foreign retirees to settle in the Philippines. Almost four decades
later, we’re at only about 30,000. That’s a 40% shortfall, not exactly a small
rounding error.
Meanwhile, Mexico sits comfortably on top of
the global leaderboard with about 1 million retirees. Thailand, our Asian
neighbor and direct competitor, boasts around 300,000—ten times our number.
Even Malaysia, which doesn’t exactly market itself as a retiree’s tropical
dream, still beats us with 40,000 arrivals.
What happened to our projections? Was this a
marketing failure, a product failure, or a management failure? And if this were
the private sector, would the long parade of DOT Secretaries—each serving also
as Chairperson of the PRA—still be in their posts after 40 years of missed
sales targets? Probably not.
But instead of indulging in finger-pointing,
let’s face forward. Current projections say we could reach 150,000 retirees in
the next ten years. That’s five times our present figure, but still only half
of Thailand’s. For a country with our climate, English-speaking population, and
famously warm people, why are we underperforming?
Part of the problem may be product perception.
Somewhere along the way, many got the wrong idea that buying property was a requirement
for an SRRV. It never was. Under the SRRV Classic category, you may convert
part of your deposit to buy a condo or lease a house for the long term—but you
can also just rent or stay in a retirement home. If you’re a 65-year-old
retiree who just paid off your mortgage in your home country, why would you
want another one here? Flexibility is the point, but we haven’t communicated
that well enough.
And on that note, retirement living in the
Philippines should be more than a condo in a high-rise. We could be offering
fully serviced retirement villages—some with in-house medical services, others
combining wellness tourism, agricultural and cultural immersion. Retirees
aren’t just looking for a place to sleep; they’re looking for a place to live
fully.
This leads to another reality check: the
retirement industry is not purely tourism. Retirees come here to live, not to
tour. Placing the PRA under the DOT may have made sense on paper, but maybe the
DTI should be selling our retirement services the way they promote
business process outsourcing or manufacturing hubs. After all, this is an
investment market—retirees bring their pensions, their healthcare spending, and
sometimes their businesses.
If we’re serious about hitting 150,000
retirees in the next decade, capacity building is key. We’ll need more
accredited retirement homes, more healthcare facilities in secondary cities,
better-trained care staff, and streamlined SRRV processing. We’ll also need to
make sure LGUs are ready—because a retiree settling in Dumaguete or Iloilo will
interact more with the local government than the PRA.
The global retiree market is exploding: 1
billion people aged 60+ by 2030, and 2.1 billion by 2050. Even capturing a
small fraction could pump billions into our economy. Right now, we’ve barely
dipped our toes in the water.
Yes, 40 years of underperformance is not a
good track record. But 10 years of focused, well-planned effort could turn us
into a major player. The choice is ours: remain a minor footnote in global
retirement migration or finally start playing in the big leagues.
Ramon Ike V. Seneres,
www.facebook.com/ike.seneres
iseneres@yahoo.com, 09088877282,
senseneres.blogspot.com
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