Poe on POGOs: It's overwhelming—benefits outweighed by negative consequences

Sen. Grace Poe said the country is being used as a venue by Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) to market online gambling in a country like China where it is prohibited.

Poe issued a firm call anew to the government to pave the way to cease their operations eventually, stressing the overwhelming social costs to the public.

On Tuesday's hearing of the Senate ways and means committee joint with public order, Poe pointed out that POGOs hire service providers (SPs) that offer services such as telemarketing, video streaming and the like to market online gambling.

"Their job is to promote gambling in a country where online gambling is illegal. Basically, we are condoning them to violate their own laws in our country," Poe said.

The senator expressed disbelief on the statement of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) that players are not necessarily from China.

"Are you saying the players are Chinese in America or Europe. Are you sure about that or are you just turning a blind eye? Because if you can tell us categorically na hindi sila from China kasi bawal 'yan doon, malaking kasinungalingan yan," Poe said.

"Ngayon, nahuli na kayo. Sinasabi n'yo hindi namin papayagan 'yang mga lisensyadong POGO kung sila'y nag-ooperate sa mga bansang bawal 'yan, alam naman natin ang pinakamalaking market nila ay China. Babawiin 'yung lisensya nila, ganu'n ba 'yun?" Poe added.

Poe, who earlier filed a resolution to look into the social costs of POGO operations in the country, also cited during the hearing the remarks from National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon that between 2017 and 2019, the Anti-Money Laundering Council said that P14 billion out of the P54 billon transactions of POGOs were dubbed suspicious.

Poe also highlighted NEDA's statement that the Philippines' attention was called for continuously hosting POGO operations despite China's ban and appeal to other countries to do the same.

"The Philippines, of course, didn't really heed that call and in effect you mentioned something about the decrease in tourist arrivals or at least the Chinese government directive to discourage tourism in the Philippines," she told the NEDA official.

Meanwhile, questioning Pagcor, Poe was able to ferret out that only 11 percent or 2,218 out of the 19,726 employees of SPs are Filipinos.

Of the P81.9 billion income of Pagcor in 2019, only P5.7 billion came from POGOs.

Poe allayed unfounded fears of massive job losses in case POGOs are shut down in the country, saying many other industries can be strengthened to generate employment for Filipinos.

"Iyong sinasabing unemployment, hindi natin 'yan minamaliit, lahat ng trabaho ay importante para sa ating mga kababayan. Pero may ibang mga industriya naman na pwedeng suportahan ng ating gobyerno para matumbasan kung hindi man mahigitan pa ang mawawala dahil dito sa ganitong uri ng negosyo," Poe said.

"When we talk about social costs, I think more than anything, we can quantify it with all of these examples that we're given, and in this case, it's overwhelming that the benefits are outweighed by the negative consequences," Poe added.