While some Philippine Senators continue to call for the country’s offshore gaming industry to be shut down completely, at least one politician has hailed the industry’s recovery under PAGCOR’s overhauled Internet Gaming Licencee (IGL) regime.
Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, the chairperson of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Tuesday lauded PAGCOR’s performance in collecting 71% more revenue from IGLs last year than in 2022 under the POGO scheme, despite less licenses having been issued.
According to a report by Philippine News Agency, the regulator had therefore “changed the landscape” surrounding offshore gaming licences by cracking down on POGOs, ensuring offshore gaming was a “controlled but contributory sector” of the economy.
“Ever since the appointment of Chairman Al Tengco, and later on, by President and COO Amy Eisma, PAGCOR has been modernizing its policies and practices,” Salceda said in a statement.
“The licensing regulations on offshore gaming, now known as Internet Gaming Licensees under PAGCOR’s revised rules, have significantly improved revenue collections, despite also reducing the number of total licensees. In other words, we’re choosier about who we license, and we also collect more from each licensee.”
Specifically, Salceda pointed to PAGCOR data showing that Php5.1 billion was collected from 87 licensees in 2023 versus Php2.99 billion from 158 POGO licensees in 2022. This followed Tengco’s announcement last year that all POGOs would be placed on a probationary stance and required to reapply for a new IGL license in an effort to clean out bad actors.
Referencing recent calls by senators to abolish all offshore gaming licenses, Salceda said, “As far as a supposed ‘phase-out’ is concerned, that’s the kind of phase-out I fully support: You phase out the bad and mediocre licensees. You don’t phase the whole industry out. You enforce the law.”
He also said that IGLs now directly employed around 8,500 Chinese workers today compared with as many as 200,000 directly and indirectly under POGO. Of the 100,000 indirect hires of IGLs presently, around 25,000 are Filipinos, he added.
“No one talks about it too much, but I think it deserves to be said: It was PAGCOR who made the first move to catch the illegal operations,” Salcedo said of recent raids on illegal POGO compounds.
“I just wish PAGCOR would be more media savvy about their accomplishments, because they’re one of the best performers in the government corporate sector right now. And they deal with sensitive concerns that the public should know.
“PAGCOR has been enforcing rules on POGOs better, and they are turning the sector into an industry that creates more jobs for Filipinos and no longer relies exclusively on Chinese demand or labor.”
