APD | PAGCOR suspends issuance of new POGO licenses; will review existing ones

By APD writer Melo M. Acuña

MANILA, Aug. 19 (APD) – The government-owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) has opted to suspend the issuance of licenses for Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO).

In a press briefing late Monday morning, PAGCOR Chairperson and CEO Andrea D. Domingo said with the moratorium, they will “closely review and monitor” existing POGO contracts to address security and legal concerns. The moratorium will hold until December 31, 2019.

“We began the moratorium three weeks ago due to miscommunications about POGO and the POGO hubs. There were also concerns on a social cause, security problems, legitimacy of (its) operations so we decided to do what is necessary to address these issues immediately,” she explained.

It will be recalled PAGCOR issued licenses to 58 POGO operators with over 130,000 employees. She did not disclose how many of them are Filipino and foreign nationals. There are still three pending POGO applications.

She said there is a maximum number of 61 POGOs in the country and they will no longer accept applications as concerns have been raised by lawmakers and the real-estate industry.

The program has been implemented for the past three years and she deemed it proper for the government to review and address all the concerns.

Gaming Employment Licenses are issued to all POGO workers for them to be under PAGCOR’s jurisdiction,

Chairperson Domingo, a former head of the Bureau of Immigration and former lawmaker, said they are working closely with the Philippine National Police-Anti-Cyber Crime Group and the National Bureau of Investigation to ensure the POGOs are operating legally.

She added prior to her assumption at PAGCOR, there were “numerous offshore gaming operations in the country operating illegally” with about 80,000 people as employees.

“We found out these illegal operations and we resolved the issues and legalized them,” she added. Other countries, according to Chairperson Domingo, are looking at the Philippine experienced because from 2016 to 2018, POGOs remitted almost P12 billion to the national coffers.

“This year, the agency is expecting P8 billion more, it’s P20 billion in a span of three years,” she concluded.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)