The Philippine government is inviting bids from the private sector for the publicly-run casinos of operator and regulator PAGCOR (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp), but the country’s Finance Secretary said he had not yet received any expressions of interest.
“It’s better for the government to move out of casino operations,” Carlos Dominguez has been reported as saying. “It will remove the conflict of interest when you are the regulator.
“Personally, I haven’t received any offers because the authorities haven’t set out the terms of the privatisation,” Dominguez said. “You have to set out the terms, then people will come. Of course, we will make it attractive since we do want to raise the revenues from this and remove the ongoing conflict of interest.”
PAGCOR directly operates a suite of state-run casinos and oversees a number of private sector ones. Its own brand of casinos is called Casino Filipino. The brand operates venues in eight locations across the country and has a further 36 so-called “satellite” sites across the Philippines.
