Reports from the Philippines suggest both the leading candidates in next spring’s presidential elections favour privatising PAGCOR, the country’s gaming regulator-cum-operator.
What practical difference that would make to the organisation of the country’s gaming industry is unclear at this stage. In many countries, the movement of an organisation from public ownership to the private sector is often seen as an opportunity to introduce market discipline to a bureaucratic or otherwise inefficient or corrupt body.
The challenge in the case of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, to give it its full name, is that as a revenue raiser in its own right and a potential source of patronage, it carries considerable political clout within the country’s governmental system. PAGCOR is said to be the only public body reporting directly to the Office of the President.
The temptation for any presidential candidate, therefore, would be to announce the ‘privatisation’ of PAGCOR and then simply hand control of the body over to political cronies who would act as ‘shareholders’. Under those circumstances, the advantage of privatisation would reside not in greater organisational efficiencies or greater transparency of operation serving the public interest, but in the ability of PAGCOR or any successor organisation to avoid scrutiny of its business affairs by the country’s elected politicians and the public accounts watchdog, the Commission on Audit, under the guise of ‘commercial confidentiality’.
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