MANILA – The Department of Tourism (DOT) and the Tourism Infrastructure Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) officially declared the Mt. Samat National Shrine as a flagship Tourism Enterprise Zone (TEZ).  

This was confirmed by Bataan Governor Albert Raymond S. Garcia last Friday through his Facebook page post.

“It’s official,” says the governor’s FB post.

The Tourism Enterprise Zone (TEZ) Program is a joint initiative of the DOT and TIEZA to actively seek out sites with viable tourism potential, have them master planned, and develop them into sustainable tourism destinations, as per the Philippine National Tourism Development Plan,  to improve marketing competitiveness of the Philippine tourism product.

Mayor Alicia Pizarro of Pilar town in an earlier interview told newsmen that a businessman is eyeing to build a cable car from the town’s Flaming Sword monument to the Shrine of Valor, with a distance of about seven kilometers, as a centerpiece of the development.

With the master development plan, TIEZA aims to encourage foreign and local investors to get involved in the tourism project.

Aside from the cable car, Pizarro said other plans include an interactive museum, hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, theme park, ecumenical chapel, convention center with about 2,000-person capacity and a capsule-type elevator to go up Mount Samat.

Gov. Garcia said that TIEZA is including the Mount Samat Shrine Tourism Enterprise Zone among its flagship programs to create a truly sacred place imbued with historical meaning, an internationally unique war memorial shrine to attract local and foreign tourists.

Garcia said that veterans, relatives and foreign visitors have been prodding local officials to put up infrastructure facilities and other amenities for them to stay longer when they attend Araw ng Kagitingan commemoration rites at Mount Samat every 9th of April.

Garcia further added that investors who would put up facilities at the Mount Samat zone are covered by various fiscal incentives.

The Mount Samat National Shrine was built in 1967 as a tribute to the heroism of Filipino-American soldiers who valiantly defended the Bataan peninsula as the last bastion of democracy in the Southeast Asian region.