Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said earlier this week that he was unwilling to ban online gambling, despite China’s pleas for a crackdown on the sector that is known to be mainly targeting Mainland gamblers.
During a televised news conference on Wednesday, the Philippines’ top lawmaker said that while he was not a big fan of online gambling himself, he was aware of the massive negative impact a ban on the activity would have on his country’s economy and that was why he chose not to introduce any further restrictions, including an outright ban.
Last month, the Philippine gambling regulator, PAGCOR, announced that it would stop accepting new license applications for the provision of offshore gambling under the country’s Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGO) program.
Since 2016, when the program was launched, the Philippines has turned into a boon for online gambling activity. The POGO licenses issued by PAGCOR allow operators to provide online gaming and betting services to gamblers located anywhere but in the Philippines.
The regulator has issued 60 such licenses since 2016, but recently said that it would stop accepting POGO applications until all concerns raised were “reviewed and comfortably addressed.”
Said concerns were prompted by reports that tens of thousands Chinese nationals were employed in the Philippines’ online gambling industry illegally. Philippine lawmakers said last month that the huge presence of illegal workers presented threat national security.
The Philippines Needs Online Gambling
The Philippines’ decision to not accept any more POGO license applications was praised by China, with Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang saying recently that his country appreciated the move and believed that Philippine lawmakers and regulators should “go further and ban all online gambling.”
POGO license holders are mostly targeting Chinese gamblers, even though online gambling is illegal in China. This explains Chinese lawmakers’ efforts to crack down on the sector not only within the country’s borders, but also internationally.
However, President Duterte, despite the warming relations between his country and China in recent years, said that he chose to “benefit the interest of my country” and that the Philippines needed online gambling.
The thriving sector provides hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Philippines and contributes hefty amounts to the nation’s coffers in the form of taxes and license fees. President Duterte said that he would not have approved this “stupid activity”, if it had not been for the jobs and economic benefits it generated in his country.
Yet, he warned locally licensed POGO operators that they should make sure to pay their due fees and prevent Filipinos from gambling on their websites.
While it might have failed in the Philippines, China’s cross-border gambling crackdown effort succeeded elsewhere. The government of Cambodia announced last month that it would no longer issue new online gambling licenses or renew the existing ones in a bid to clamp down on a sector that has turned into a threat for public order and into a refuge for criminals to cheat and extort money from domestic and international victims.
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