Casino fees up more than 25 percent
The Philippines’ state-run gaming regulator has posted a 536.6 percent increase in net income for 2018 largely due to its sale of land to Philippine casino operator Bloomberry Resorts Corp, completed in June.
Bloomberry’s Sureste Properties subsidiary paid PHP37.33 billion (US$716 million) to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. for two parcels of land in Metro Manila where the group’s Solaire Resort and Casino is located. PAGCOR reported a profit of PHP32.72 billion (US$627.6 million) on the sale. According to GGRAsia, PAGCOR’s revenue from gaming operations rose 18.3 percent from the previous year to PHP67.85 billion (US$1.3 billion) in 2018. The regulator posted PHP2.31 billion in income from other services, the news outlet reported.
PAGCOR said regulatory fees from licensed casinos rose 25.3 percent year-on-year to PHP24.12 billion last year. In addition to serving as the Philippines’ gaming regulator, PAGCOR also is an operator of publicly-owned casinos under the Casino Filipino brand; those properties located in eight markets around the country must share 50 percent of their profits with the federal government. In 2018, PAGCOR announced a plan to sell off its properties amid concerns about conflicts of interest; with the boom in gaming revenues, that plan seems to have been sidelined for now.
PAGCOR chief Andrea Domingo says GGR for 2018 reached PHP200 billion, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year. She recently forecast 8.5 percent growth to PHP217 billion for 2019, and has urged President Rodrigo Duterte to reconsider his ban on new casino licenses, saying, “Gaming seems to be the sunrise industry now in Asia.”
