The holiday island of Boracay in the Philippines may be considering a gaming venue as the centerpiece of a larger entertainment complex, though President Rodrigo Duterte has declared that the island would never host a casino.
According to local media, officials have established the Boracay Island Development Authority (BIDA), the first step in planning such a facility. A gaming-centered entertainment complex would be subject to approval and licensing by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR), the country’s gaming regulator.
BIDA is intended to replace the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF), created to oversee the rehabilitation of the island during its closure from April 2016 to October 2018. Prior to that, hotels on the island reportedly allowed raw sewage to run into surrounding waters and tourists left tons of trash behind. At the time, Duterte referred to the island as “a cesspool.”
The shutdown left 17,000 people temporarily out of work and cost an estimated $1 billion in lost tourism revenue.
Prior to that, Philippines-listed Leisure and Resorts World Corp. (LRWC) had proposed a US$500 million casino resort on Boracay in partnership with Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. In a December 2019 filing to the Philippine Stock Exchange, LRWC said “due to the moratorium imposed by President Rodrigo Duterte, there are no further discussions on the Boracay project with Galaxy Entertainment.”
But on June 15, two committees of the Philippine House of Representatives approved the creation of the BIDA, which allows gaming, amusement and recreational facilities to operate on the island.
“Boracay Island is already bursting at the seams, having exceeded its carrying capacity. Thus, there is no more space for further development into an ecotourism zone,” said the BIATF. Opponents feel the creation of a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) on Boracay would undermine efforts to protect the island’s ecology and cause the same kind of damage that caused its shutdown.
