After 22 years, the Miss Universe pageant will be held once again in the country.
Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo announced the news on Thursday, July 28 at a press conference in Makati.
“I would like to inform everybody that the Miss Universe pageant will be on January 30, 2017 in the Philippines,” said Teo. “The government is not going to spend any single centavo. It will be the private sector who would shoulder the expenses.”
On a report of Rappler, President Rodrigo Duterte said that he would not spend government funds on hosting the Miss Universe pageant – leading some to believe that the plans to hold the pageant in the country would not push through.
At the press conference, it was mentioned that the funding would come from the private sector.
“Private sector will handle the expenses. The president’s concern was the gastos. But when we assured him that there will be no funding from the government. He said, okay. ‘This is already okay’ So we don’t know where the news report came from that he did not like it. He never said that,” Tourism Undersecretary Kat de Castro said on the sidelines of a press briefing in Makati City on Thursday, July 28.
The pageant was held in Manila for the first time in 1974, when Miss Universe 1973 Margarita Moran crowned Amparo Muñoz of Spain. In 1994, the pageant came back to the country where India’s Sushmita Sen was crowned by Miss Universe 1993 Dayanara Torres.
In 2017, the reigning Miss Universe, the Philippines’ own Pia Wurtzbach, will crown her successor.
