Albay Rep. Joey Salceda thumbed down proposals for a total ban of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), saying the idea will negate efforts of the Marcos administration to clean up the industry. He urged all stakeholders instead to “give legal POGOs a chance.”
Salceda, chair of the House committee on ways and means, made the statement following Department of Finance (DOF) Secretary Ralph Recto’s recent comment that he would recommend to Malacañang for POGO operations to discontinue.
“Since Pagcor (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation) began cracking down hard on illegal POGOs under President Marcos’s administration, tax and regulatory fee collections have increased dramatically from fewer licensees. We are cutting out the weeds so that the flowers can grow,” Salceda, the House resident economist, said.
Salceda noted there were 158 licensees paying P2.99 billion in fees since the Pagcor enforced the crackdown. “Now, there are just 87, and they pay Pagcor P5.17 billion in fees.”
“The difference is starker on the tax side. At the height of POGOs in 2019, there were 298 licensees that paid P6.42 billion in total taxes. Now, with just 87 licensees, internet gaming licensees paid P10.3 billion in taxes,” he noted.
Salceda stressed that the legal POGO sector “is now also becoming less and less Chinese and more Filipino.”
“Filipinos now account for as many as 25,000 direct POGO employees, with Vietnamese nationals now also outnumbering Chinese nationals. Among indirect hires, Pagcor cites indirect industry estimates that put the number of indirect offshore online gaming workers at close to 100,000, of which roughly 65,000 are Filipinos and 30,000 foreign nationals,” he said.
Salceda added: “If you close down the whole sector, good players and bad, you put to waste all the efforts of the Marcos administration to crack down on the bad players.”
