Permit now in jeopardy
Tiger Resorts Leisure and Entertainment Inc. has forfeited a US$2.2 million guarantee paid to the Philippine gaming regulatory agency, PAGCOR. The payment is a penalty for delays in the company’s $2 billion Manila casino-resort project. The integrated resort is now likely to open in 2016; under the original plan, the resort should have been completed on March 31.
Tiger Leisure’s provisional gaming license could also be suspended, said PAGCOR Vice President Francis Hernando in an interview with Reuters.
Tiger Resorts is controlled by Japanese casino magnate Kazuo Okada through Tokyo-based Universal Entertainment. The Manila resort broke ground in 2012; in February, the company sought an extension of its deadline to the second quarter of 2017, Reuters reported. Hernando noted that the company had not met the minimum requirement of 50 percent project completion by the March 2015 deadline.
“We’ve given them a 90-day period to explain why their license should not be suspended. We are in that 90-day period since April 21,” Hernando said.
According to Forbes, as Manila positions itself for a gaming boom, Cristino Naguiat, chairman and CEO of PAGCOR, is open to more investment by international operators, and is more committed to transparency than his predecessors in the office.
