Biz Buzz: GCG vs Pagcor

THEY may have beaten their revenue target for 2015 by a wide margin, but that doesn’t mean that the officials of Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) have been shown some love by the government they’re part of.

Biz Buzz learned that Pagcor employees, to this day, have yet to receive their Christmas bonuses, the approval for which is being held up by another government agency in charge of reviewing the performance of other state-run agencies.

We’re talking, of course, about the Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG), which is mandated by law to set performance parameters for government-owned and -controlled corporations. In fairness to the GCG, many GOCCs are non- or poorly performing agencies that warrant close supervision. But Pagcor is clearly a different animal, having helped rake in P130 billion for the Philippine gaming industry last year, representing a 17-percent increase.

We’re told that, when GCG set a high revenue target for Pagcor last year, the officials of the state gaming regulator scratched their heads because they found it unreasonably high. But they hunkered down and worked toward meeting that goal. When the dust cleared, Pagcor not only met the GCG goal but even beat it by a wide margin.

Despite this, GCG has not acted on the bonus of Pagcor employees in time for the holidays. What’s worse is that GCGhas yet to approve the previous bonus for Pagcor (which breaks down employee bonuses into four quarters of the year instead of a big one at yearend).

That means there are now two pending approvals for Pagcor bonuses sitting on the desks of GCG officials, without any indication of when they will be disbursed to the deserving employees.

Before long, it will be time for GCG to sit down with Pagcor officials again and set performance goals for 2016.

Given the history between both agencies, expect Pagcor officials to

be given another “impossible” revenue goal.

We’re told that some in the Pagcor hierarchy are now wondering if the GCG guys have something personal against them... or if there’s some other hidden agenda behind all the roadblocks. Daxim L. Lucas