A Philippines senator has called for gaming regulator PAGCOR to be split into two separate bodies due to concerns over a conflict of interest between its regulatory and operational responsibilities.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian spoke at a senate hearing on Wednesday in which he accused PAGCOR of failing to regulate the nation’s gaming industry to its full extend because doing so would potentially reduce its own earnings.
“There is indeed a conflict of interest in PAGCOR’s responsibilities,” he said, suggesting the problem affects both regulation of the land-based casino and the POGO industries.
“Since it is a regulator, it should be strict. On the other hand, it earns, it is not so strict.”
According to Philippine News Agency, Gatchalian’s suggested solution is to amend the PAGCOR charter to create one agency for regulation and another for casino operations. PAGCOR operates nine casinos in major cities across the Philippines under the Casino Filipino brand plus 32 satellite casinos.
“One of the things I see is if we can’t solve that [problem], if we can’t separate regulation and operation, we can’t separate our problem with POGO.”
On the issue of POGOs, which have been at the center of concerns around kidnapping cases across the Philippines, Gatchalian took particular issue with a report by PAGCOR Senior Manager Renfred Tan claiming the POGO industry would generate revenues of Php10 billion (US$176 million) for the government by 2027 – higher than the Php8 billion (US$141 million) achieved in 2019. Tan also said PAGCOR aimed to gain 100% market share of [legal] online gaming operations in Southeast Asia.
In response, Gatchalian said, “I know that what you’ve written is just for compliance purposes, but this document you made is toilet paper, to be honest about it.
“We don’t understand the industry. We don’t even know the potential of this industry. You plan to increase revenue but you don’t know where to get it and you don’t know how many POGOs there are in the entire world. So we’re just going to allow them to continue but you yourself don’t know the industry.”
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