The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., known as PAGCOR, has been waiting more than a year for outstanding payments from Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs). Those iGaming operators owe the regulator $42.6 million, per the government’s Commission on Audit (COA).
According to a report from the Manila Inquirer, COA informed PAGCOR of the results of its 2021 audit on June 13.
“Out of the PHP2.328 billion accounts receivables outstanding for over 360 days, PHP 815.902 million is under protest,” the body wrote. The funds, it added, could have been utilized as part of PAGCOR’s contribution to nation-building. “The presence of substantial accounts receivable from POGOs has been a persistent issue for several years,” COA said.
The COA also noted that some uncollected accounts have been outstanding from one year to five years. Collection procedures start with a notice of delinquency to the POGO licensees, but could lead to forfeiture of performance bonds, and the suspension, cessation or cancellation of offshore gaming licenses.
The uncollected fees caused a “delay in the opportunity to use the much-needed resources in pursuit of PAGCOR’s mandate” to provide revenues to the government and support nation-building, auditors said.
PAGCOR responded that some POGOs objected to the amounts being billed by the regulator starting in 2018, based on gross gaming revenue (GGR) estimates from a third-party auditor.
“The affected POGOs, due to the substantial amount of the regulatory fees, filed protest letters on various dates from May 2018 to October 2019,” the regulator stated. “Some of the affected POGOs partially paid, while some did not pay the billed amount, hence, resulted to the outstanding balance.”
The regulator now concedes that the billed amounts were inaccurate, because the third-party auditor “failed to establish a clear linkage between the suspected undeclared (iGaming) websites and POGOs.”
The number of POGOS operating in the Philippines has dropped from 63 in 2019 to just 26 at the end of April. PAGCOR recently told Inside Asian Gaming that it has canceled 22 POGO licenses outright, primarily due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Operations were suspended from March 2020 through May 2020. At that point, the country saw a mass flight of foreign-born POGO employees, who reportedly feared “discrimination when availing of health services in case they contract the Covid-19 virus.”
