Similar to some other factor in economics, POGOs have advantages and prices, and we want a extra sober dialogue on them transferring ahead
Should you step again from the teleserye-like recounting of Bamban Mayor Alice Guo’s idyllic life at an notorious “farm”– that one way or the other led her to proudly owning a piggery and helicopter – the larger query we ought to be asking is: What ought to we do with Philippine Offshore Playing Operators, extra generally referred to as POGOs?
Similar to some other factor in economics, POGOs have advantages and prices, and we want a extra sober dialogue on them transferring ahead.
Advantages
First, the advantages. Undeniably, POGOs introduced in financial actions that led not simply to new investments and new buildings being erected (from the Manila Bay Space to a city as nondescript as Bamban, Tarlac), but additionally to Filipinos being employed.
Again in October 2022, it was reported by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Company (Pagcor) that 19,671, or practically half, of POGO employees then had been, in truth, Filipinos. That didn’t but embody Filipinos employed as cooks or househelps catering to the wants of the inflow of Chinese language immigrants.
Lately, it was alleged by the Affiliation of Service Suppliers and POGOs (ASPAP) that about 23,000 jobs could be destroyed by a complete POGO ban.
All this provides as much as the POGOs’ contributions to the nation’s gross home product or GDP.
Should you recall out of your highschool economics, GDP is nothing however the peso worth of all items and providers produced in a rustic per quarter or 12 months, whatever the nationality of people that produced such items and providers – Filipino, Chinese language, and many others. So in precept, POGOs should replicate in GDP.
The federal government really got here out with numbers. Professor Sarah Lynne Daway-Ducanes, a colleague of mine on the UP Faculty of Economics (UPSE) and a former assistant secretary on the Nationwide Financial and Improvement Authority (NEDA), testified in Congress that POGOs doubtless contributed about 0.2% of GDP (a fifth of 1%) in 2023. That amounted to about P42 billion.
That’s puny by itself, and decrease than the 0.3% of GDP in 2022 and the 0.7% in 2019 (simply when POGOs had been at their full may through the Duterte administration).
By the best way, in Bamban alone, a whopping P6.1 billion was spent for the 10-hectare POGO hub located on the land beforehand owned by Mayor Alice Guo. Preliminary POGO investments like that additionally generate multiplier results, that means a cascade of financial actions surrounding POGO hubs (consider the eating places and comfort shops catering to POGO employees).
With financial exercise comes tax revenues. POGO collections by PAGCOR and the Bureau of Inner Income (BIR) peaked at P14.4 billion in 2019, however have since dwindled, in line with information shared by Professor Cielo Magno, a former undersecretary of the Division of Finance and one other colleague at UPSE.
One other main supply of financial exercise could be actual property leases, from workplace areas to residential items. In 2019, POGOs reportedly occupied greater than one million sq. meters of workplace house, or “about 10% of complete leasable workplace house in Metro Manila.” That’s lots. However in fact such demand has since diminished.
Prices
Now let’s transfer on to the prices of POGOs, that are plentiful (possibly too many to say right here).
First, the considerably greater demand for actual property items drove up costs of condominium items and workplace areas, to the detriment of Filipinos wishing to make use of them. In 2019, one report by ANC indicated that in some situations condominium prices per sq. meter greater than tripled due to POGOs.
However whilst POGOs have exited in earnest for the reason that begin of the pandemic, new properties are simply being completed. And the glut of vacancies is driving actual property costs down. You possibly can simply think about that such wild swings in actual property costs usually are not excellent news for the true property sector.
Way more necessary are the social prices of POGOs, which have resulted in too many studies of hyperlinks to prison actions comparable to human trafficking, on-line scams, and even torture.
On June 5, it was reported {that a} girl in a POGO hub in Porac, Pampanga was “tortured and offered on-line for sexual providers.” In the meantime, in November 2023, authorities found a “torture chamber” in an web gaming license hub in Pasay Metropolis, the place some victims had been “hit with a stick” or “kicked and punched a number of occasions for not assembly the quota set by administration.”
In August 2023, some 28,000 SIM playing cards had been found in a POGO hub in Parañaque Metropolis, allegedly concerned in on-line scams. This, regardless of the passage of the SIM Registration Act. Different POGOs are suspected to be concerned in “love scams” and cryptocurrency scams.
Then, in fact, within the sprawling, 10-hectare POGO hub in Bamban city in Tarlac province, authorities found a “secret tunnel” that linked villas and was allegedly utilized by the operators to flee earlier than authorities raided the ability. If their operations had been above board, why the necessity for a secret tunnel?
POGOs have additionally been suspected of harboring cash laundering actions. Again in 2020, the Anti-Cash Laundering Council (AMLC) reported that of the recorded P54 billion value of POGO transactions then, P14 billion (simply a fourth) had been tagged as “suspicious actions.” As for the P6.1 billion POGO investments in Bamban, the AMLC allegedly couldn’t hint such flows.
There are environmental prices, too, as proven by an island in Cavite province – a wildlife sanctuary – that was become a POGO hub round 2019. (To be concluded) – Rappler.com
JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor on the UP Faculty of Economics and the writer of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and Easy methods to Debunk Them. In 2024, he was given The Excellent Younger Males (TOYM) Award for economics. JC’s views are unbiased of his affiliations. Comply with him on Twitter/X (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.
