Philippine Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque claimed that President Rodrigo Duterte respects free speech and has not banned any website, adding that the government finds no reason to shut down TikTok operations in the country despite moves by some other countries to ban the use of this popular app, the country's ABS-CBN News and its newspaper Manila Bulletin reported on Tuesday.

Filipinos can still enjoy using TikTok as the government is not likely to ban the popular short video application in the country.

Roque was speaking during a televised press briefing Tuesday when he was asked whether the government has security concerns about TikTok operations in the Philippines.

He didn't see any reason to ban TikTok in the Philippines, stated Roque, adding that he was also a keen TikTok user.

The wildly popular Chinese video app, TikTok has some millions of users globally who share short videos with music and a variety of special effects. However, the popular app has so far been banned in India and it has come under scrutiny in some other countries due to their alleged security and privacy issues.

After Huawei was labelled and targeted as an information security "threat," TikTok became the new target for many at a time when U.S. elections are on the way.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to ban the popular app from operating in the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that Trump is days away from announcing strong actions against the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok, alleging concerns over national security. 

The move to ban TikTok in the U.S. comes at a time of escalating geopolitical tensions between Beijing and the Trump administration over a number of issues, emerging from trade disputes and later spreading to fields including technology and finance.

TikTok has great growth potential for both further user growth and commercialization, an analyst who focuses on mobile marketing analytics but prefers to be anonymous told CGTN.

Other tech giants took the new player as a serious threat by beginning to develop similar products.

Instagram launched its short video app Reels late last year in several countries, expecting to bring new video features to its platform. YouTube is also reported to be working on its own similar product called Shorts.

If it is too hard to compete with a rival product, it would be easier to resort to a government approach and information security is enough to attack a Chinese company, the marketing analyst said.

(With input from agencies)