DAVAO CIT Y — Despite New Year’s day technical glitch the Bureau of Immigration (BI) reported an increase in departures.
Immigration Port Operations Divisions (POD) Chief Atty. Carlos Capulong, only a total of 19,010 travelers departed on January 1.
The number jumped to 41,757 the following day, and the BI continued to process around 34-37k travelers per day on the next few days.
Commissioner Norman Tansingco said that they expect the numbers to increase as those travelers from cancelled flights are rebooked to new flights.
“Lines are observed at the immigration area during peak hours due to the increase in passengers following the holiday season and recovery of cancelled flights,” said Tansingco. “While lines are expected both here and in other countries of destination, we can assure that they are expeditiously processed as our officers are in full force, and additional personnel have been deployed to serve as backup as needed to process the higher number of passengers,”
In 2022, the BI processed a total of 6,132,332 passengers.
Topping the list of departures are Filipinos with 3,917,296, followed by Americans with 611,067 departing travelers. The number of South Koreans and Australians that departed were 424,193 and 128,859 respectively, while 119,807 Canadians departed in the same year.-Editha Z. Caduaya
