Philippines Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno has once again called for the sale of casinos owned and operated by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR), the country’s regulatory body. PAGCOR head Alejandro Tengco has pledged to sell the casinos by the end of his term, possibly as early as 2024, but Diokno insists the situation is untenable and must change as soon as possible.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “knows it’s not smart to have the same operator and [regulator]—that’s a conflict of interest,” Diokno added. He said the Department of Finance could expedite the sale through its Governance Commission for Government-Owned or -Controlled Corporations (GCG), reports Inside Asian Gaming.
“PAGCOR is a corporation,” Diokno said. “What GCG usually does is to propose an executive order” for a sale or other action, he said. “They can turn it over to us.”
Late last year, the secretary told local media, “If you’re a regulator, stick to that. You cannot run gambling casinos. It’s like saying that you have a central bank and yet you’re also running a bank. That cannot work.”
Clearly, Diokno is impatient with the slow pace of change, a possible reference to Tengco’s three-pronged plan to boost the value of the casinos before selling. Speaking at G2E Asia last month, Tengco said he wants to modernize the casinos’ IT and cybersecurity, upgrade some 3,000 electronic gaming machines (EGMs) and establish new technical standards for EGMs before putting the casinos on the market.
PAGCOR has stated it wants to generate almost US$1.5 billion from the sale of its 41 casinos, which include nine under the Casino Filipino brand and 32 operating as satellites in venues leased from third parties.
Tengco has said the privatization “is now at the forefront of our master plan, with PAGCOR shifting its energy towards a purely regulatory role.”
