MANILA PHILIPPINES – The Filipinos may travel to Japan with no visa requirement to be lifted. This is according to the Philippine Ambassador to Japan on Wednesday.
Ambassador to Japan Manolo Lopez said, “We are just awaiting the official advice, but from reliable sources and from the Kyodo news, that have come out already, it seems that it is likely going to happen sometime in June of this year.”
According to Kyodo News, the Japanese ruling coalition and its government “are processing arrangements” to waive the visa requirements for its visitors from Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines.
The Japanese government has eased its visa policy for Southeast Asian countries last year by only issuing multiple-entry tourist visas to Filipinos.
Likewise, According to an ANC media interview, Lopez said that the simplicity in visa prerequisite is a piece of Japan’s arrangement to help its economy. “Since the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came into power in December 2012, the economy of japan have started to inch up and they would like to sustain this momentum by inviting more tourism coming into Japan and they realized that in Southeast Asia that there is a lot of wealth in these countries.”
“To lift the visa is part of the country’s “revised action plan wherein Japan is focusing on tourists and it will host the Olympic in 2020,” Kyodo News said quoting government sources while the Japanese Embassy in Manila has yet to confirm the report.
“Japan is targeting 20 million tourists by 2020 and they only breached the 10 million mark recently and so they will liberalize more and more the entry to Japan from other countries,” Lopez added. - J.C.Estrella
