Gov’t to organize special team for privatization of PAGCOR casinos

THE DEPARTMENT of Finance (DoF) will set up a team to privatize the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.’s (PAGCOR) casinos, and is awaiting the President’s approval to do so.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said that the DoF submitted a draft Executive Order (EO) on the privatization plan for President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s approval in September.

“We are working on it. We submitted a draft EO to the President for the process of privatizing PAGCOR,” Mr. Dominguez told reporters last week.

He said that once the plan is approved, a group separate from the Privatization Management Office (PMO) will handle the sale of casinos due to the relatively complex structure of such companies compared with other state assets, such as land.

“You know we have a PMO, but PAGCOR is a special case. It is licenses that you are privatizing, and it’s a little more technical; quite frankly we admit it’s a little more technical than what the PMO can handle,” Mr. Dominguez said.

“So we said we will make a special group, separate from PMO; we have to have a specialized team,” he added.

Mr. Dominguez said the team’s members will include representatives of the DoF, the Office of the President, the Department of Justice, the Department of Budget and Management, and the Governance Commission of governmentowned and -controlled corporations.

Mr. Dominguez said that the draft EO has been circulated among concerned agencies such as PAGCOR, before submitting it to Malacañang.

He said approval of the EO “will come out in about 60 to 90 days.”

Once approved, the privatization team will start reviewing the sale terms.

Mr. Dominguez has said the priority is to sell purely PAGCOR-owned casinos over those with joint-venture partners.

Mr. Dominguez said that he hopes to have the sale rolled out by next year. —