The Bureau of Immigration (BI) said that the number of departures are steadily rising after the holiday season.

The BI shared that they are recording around 30 to 31 thousand departures per day for all international airports. The number is slightly higher than the 21 to 25 thousand departures processed during the first week of December.

Data shared by the BI show that for January to December 2023, they have processed a total of 13,224,308 departing passengers. The peak month for departure was December, which saw 1,201,484 departures.

More than 7 million Filipinos also departed during this period, among which are overseas Filipino workers as well as tourists traveling for leisure abroad.

“A lot of Filipinos have traveled this year as countries reopened their borders after the pandemic,” said Tansingco.

Prior to the pandemic, the BI recorded more than 8 million departing Filipinos.

South Koreans have the highest number of outbound travel for foreign nationals in 2023 with more than 1.55 million departures. This is followed by Americans with 1.19 departures, and Chinese nationals with 406 thousand departures. BI News