‘Let POGOs resume for crisis response funds’

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) should be allowed to resume their businesses to enable the government to raise needed revenue to address the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a congressman proposed yesterday.

House appropriations committee chair Eric Yap said allowing POGOs to immediately resume operations under strict protocols, such as “work from home” arrangements, could help address the financial burden of the government during this crisis.

“In view of exhausting government coffers, the suspension of POGO operations should be lifted immediately to give our tax collection a much-needed boost. We need all the help we can get right now and it will not hurt us if we get additional source of revenue to help our countrymen in this time of pandemic,” the ACT-CIS party-list congressman stressed.

The lawmaker bared that the government has raised P6 billion in annual revenue from license taxes of POGOs while the Bureau of Internal Revenue has collected about P1 billion per year from withholding taxes of the firms.

This means the government has already lost about P500 million from POGO revenues from the past month of enhanced community quarantine implementation and could further lose another P250 million in the last two weeks of the quarantine.

Yap, also vice chair of the House games and amusements committee, argued that POGOs could be allowed to resume operations without jeopardizing public health measures being implemented to prevent spread of the disease.

The lawmaker said the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) could come up with the guidelines on the proposed resumption of POGO operations.

Pagcor suspended POGO operations as the government implemented an enhanced quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID-19.