PAGCOR: We’re not Macau
Despite widespread volatility in the Asian gaming market, gross gaming revenue in the Philippines jumped 17 percent for 2015, according to Cristino Naguiat, chairman of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. In an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Naguiat said, “We showed a big improvement last year despite the business environment,” a reference to the 34.3 percent decline in gaming revenue in Macau.
Total GGR for Philippine casinos topped out at PHP130 billion (US$2.75 billion) for the year. PAGCOR itself reaped PHP48.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) in gaming revenue in 2015 while the licensees “made almost PHP82 billion,” Naguiat told the Inquirer. That’s an increase of 15.75 percent for PAGCOR, and an 18 percent boost for the licensees on a year-on-year basis, he said in a report cited by GGRAsia.
It’s a marked difference from Macau, the world’s leading gaming jurisdiction, where GGR toppled by more than one-third in the first full year of an historic recession, prompted by the crackdown on corruption ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Macau’s accumulated GGR for 2015 came in at MOP230.84 billion (US$28.9 billion), compared to MOP351.5 billion in the previous year.
Naguiat also hailed the bump in the Philippines’ junket business. “In 2014, our total junket business was only PHP2 billion, but we hit PHP5 billion last year,” he said.
According to analysts, in the second half of 2015 the Philippine gaming industry started to feel the ripple effect of the financial crisis in Macau, a slump that has caused the VIP market to shrink by half in less than two years, according to CNN.
Naguiat said he’s confident the same won’t happen in the Philippines. “The market is not really weak,” he said. “What’s important for us in the Philippines is that we met all our 2015 targets.”
