Taiwan remains a visa-free destination for Filipinos until July 2025 after its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) on Tuesday announced the extension of its trial visa-free entry program for Filipino nationals for one more year.
According to a bulletin from the MoFA’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, Filipinos may still enjoy the privilege like other travelers from Thailand and Brunei for another year.
“After evaluating the effectiveness of the above measures over the past years, participating agencies decided to extend the trial visa-free entry program for one year for nationals of Thailand, Brunei, and the Philippines from 1 August 2024, to 31 July 2025,” the MoFA said.
Simplified visa regulations project
In addition, the self-ruled island nation said that its Project for Simplifying Visa Regulations for High-end Group Tourists from Southeast Asian Countries will also be extended for a further year until the end of 2025.
Likewise, the conditional visa-free entry through the Travel Authorization Certificate scheme will remain in place.
Taiwan extended its trial for the visa-free entry program for Filipinos last year, which was supposed to end next month.
Last September, it temporarily suspended its visa-free entry privilege for visitors from Brunei, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Russia.
In the same month, the visa-free entry privilege for Filipinos was reinstated.
Wallace Minn-Gan Chow, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines representative, previously said that Taiwan is targeting more than 320,000 visitors from the Philippines.
Reciprocate Taiwan’s visa-free
entry scheme
Last April in a forum in Boracay, Chow suggested that the Philippine government reciprocate Taiwan’s visa-free entry scheme to provide Taiwanese nationals the same favor in entering Philippine soil.
He said TECO is asking the Philippines to provide visa-free entry to Taiwanese nationals entering the Philippines for at least two weeks.
“If the Philippine government can give a visa waiver for two weeks, the number of Taiwanese tourists going to the Philippines will be much more,” he said in a DAILY TRIBUNE interview.
