Aquino names advertising executive as new DoT chief

Incoming Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez

BEIJING – President Benigno Aquino III has named an advertising executive as the new tourism secretary.

Mr. Aquino made the announcement Wednesday night just as the former Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim’s resignation took effect on August 31.

“Mon Jimenez has accepted the position. He’s a marketing, advertising guy and, you know, tourism, I think is primarily a marketing effort because the product is already there,” Mr. Aquino told reporters in an informal talk after a hectic day here on Wednesday.

“There is enhancing the product that we have in the Philippines and, at the end of the day, he will be informing a lot of the citizens of the world that there are such and such sites accessible, [and] it should be visited,” the President said.

“That will be something that he will do. He’s studying for the post, roughly about a week or so, about two weeks,” he added.

Aquino said days earlier that he had chosen Lim’s replacement but withheld his identity.

Jimenez’s name came up as a possible next tourism secretary when reports of Lim’s resignation were posted on the Internet.

Aquino said Jimenez asked that his appointment not be announced before Lim’s resignation took effect.

“He was studying things during the time that we weren’t speaking. We couldn’t see each other often. That would be like saying, ‘This is the next tourism secretary. Ask him questions left and right and don’t give him time [for himself] anymore’,” President Aquino said.

Aquino said he would meet with Jimenez when he returns to the Philippines following his state visit here.

“I want to see him by next week and I assume there will be things that he has discovered, things he wants done,” he added.

The President said “the last communication” he had with Jimenez “was basically when he was assessing those that he would be working with and to a large extent I think he would be, for the meantime, maintaining the bureaucracy at the DoT.”