Pagcor open to possibility of privatizing all casinos

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) said yesterday it is open to the possibility of privatizing all the casinos it currently owns and operates as proposed by the Department of Finance (DOF).

Pagcor chairman and chief executive officer Andrea Domingo said she is amenable to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez’s plan to privatize all 46 government-run casinos.

“On the privatization of Pagcor-owned and -operated casinos, I am not opposing that,” Domingo said during a press conference on the sidelines of the ASEAN Gaming Summit.

“We are still at the point where we would still have to decide the valuation of the 46 casinos that we have, how we’re going to sell it and at what price. This usually takes a long period of time,” she said.

However, Domingo clarified that the Pagcor and the DOF have not yet discussed whether they would push through with the plan and how they would go forward with it.

“We haven’t had a chance to discuss it with the DOF...But I’m sure it will come up soon enough because the first time I met the President after I was appointed, Secretary Dominguez was there and he was already talking about the privatization because there were a lot of smaller properties that were not earning that time,” Domingo said.

“But now that everybody’s earning, I don’t know, we have to discuss,” she said.

According to Domingo, Pagcor has worked during the first two months of the year to improve the performance of government-run casinos.

The gross gaming revenue (GGR) of government-owned casinos reached P9.71 billion during the first two months of the year, according to Domingo.

She said Pagcor is projecting up to P160 billion in GGR for the whole gaming industry this 2017, seven percent higher than the industry’s P149.12 billion GGR posted in 2016.

“We’re more friendly with other ASEAN countries, we’re offering a level playing field in terms of business investment, we have a very safe country, we have lovely people, hospitable people, and an open society that know nothing about discrimination,” Domingo said when asked what would drive this growth in 2017.