Will the Philippines lose one of its biggest gambles?
Your move, Philippines. (Photo: Debt.org)
Payday has come and gone. That means more money to spend on whatever heavily inflated purchases we’re making nowadays. No one likes to have an empty wallet. Unfortunately, the Philippine economy is about to know what it’s like.
A rough bet
Alright Pinoy gamers, you’ve been having a lot of fun lately with all your playing and money spending, and in lucky instances, your wins huh?
Oh, I’m not talking about video games. I’m talking about pogo. No, not the stick. The Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) industry to be more specific. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an online casino where people (of legal age, of course) play and gamble to their heart’s content.
A couple of weeks ago, Senator Imee Marcos revealed in a radio interview with dzBB that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was thinking about closing down POGO operations by declaring them illegal in the country. This is because it’s becoming more difficult to regulate them with the amount of violence and crimes that have been happening for a number of years.
The Philippine National Police revealed that 15 out of the 29 recorded kidnappings in 2022 were POGO related.
Finance secretary Benjamin Diokno shares the same sentiment. Last September 15, Diokno stated that it’s an “operational risk” to maintain POGO operations. After countries like China and Cambodia have already discontinued the infamous gambling platform, they’ve made their way into the Philippines instead. “Why are they going to the Philippines?” the finance chief said. “Maybe because we are loose, we’re not strict on our rules…”
Win some, lose some
While on the surface, it may seem good to completely stop POGO in the country, it may also have severe economic implications.
According to David Leechiu, property analyst and CEO of Leechiu Property Consultants, telling POGOs to shoo will not only eliminate billions in tax revenues—P54.3 billion to be exact—for the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), it will also cost the economy boatloads of money every year in terms of office (P18.9 billion) and residential rentals (P28.6 billion), and utilities (P9.5 billion), among other things. Oh, and we must not forget the 347,000 workers who are at risk of losing their jobs.
For perspective, Leechiu estimates that the Philippines will be missing out on P952 million of revenue per day. Now that’s a lot of cheddar.
Before one of y’all will say we can handle that sort of loss, maybe think again. The Peso to Dollar exchange rate is already at an all time low, it has come to the point where businessmen are basically asking the public to brave the pandemic since we need constant cash flow, and spending-from-home just ain’t cutting it, and current food prices are making it look like an all-water diet is the most economic choice right now.
While I don’t condone gambling (the closest I got was a bet over a basketball game with my dad, the loser had to pay for ice cream), it’s hard to deny just how much of an economic driver POGOs have been for the Philippines.
It’s a question of whether or not we continue to let people gamble their money away to the Philippines’ bank account and risk crimes happening left and right or remove them altogether? Or, have better implementation of policies to protect everyone involved in the industry?
What do you think? Place your bets (I’m kidding). And yes, I had to buy my dad ice cream.
