Philippines president says willing to allow online gambling to resume

The lottery is based on a proprietary software which has been developed by PhilWeb, in which a chosen lottery number is texted by a bettor to PhilWeb/Pagcor servers via Smart mobile phones.

Recently appointed by the country’s 16th President Rodrigo Duterte, who was sworn in in July, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III recently told reporters, “We believe that government should only be in regulatory functions and not in commercial functions and therefore [should] dispose of – by sale or closing down – the commercial functions”, as quoted by the news outlet. This effectively forced PhilWeb out of business on August 10.

Valdes noted that the existing lottery operated by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office through some 4,000 outlets nationwide earns about R30 billion a year.

With former Philweb chair Roberto V. Ongpin now out of the picture and Pagcor still studying the businessman’s latest offer to donate his shares in the technology company, Valdes said it had become incumbent upon him as the most senior officer of Philweb to “exhaust all efforts in trying to maintain the continued existence of Philweb”.

Released earlier this month, PAGCOR’s second-quarter data indicates that during that period the firm’s own casinos operated approximately one-third of all table games and close to six of every 10 electronic gaming machines (EGM’s) in the Philippines, according to GGRAsia.

“With over 100 million cell phones and 1.5 billion texts per day, it is not hard to see the advantage of Pagcor Text Bonanza over PCSO’s Lotto system”, he explained. It could rather supplement the government’s income “many times over” the P30 billion generated from the existing lottery system.

“Despite the fact that PLDT has now divested from its ownership in PhilWeb, as part of the divestment negotiations, it had agreed to continue this sharing formula”, Mr. Valdes said, noting that Globe Telecom, Inc. may participate in the project should it agree to such a setup.

“While this would solve Philweb’s problems and increase Pagcor’s income dramatically, it would not address the problems of the existing e-Games operators and their investment of P1.8 billion”.

“I will recommend to the board that we stick to our first decision”, Ms Domingo reportedly said in a text message said to have been conveyed to the newspaper via a member of Pagcor’s corporate communications team.

The new president added online gambling to his hit list of vices, with the gaming regulator opting not to renew expired licenses of gaming cafes to prevent poor Filipinos from betting.

The Philippines’ Department of Finance is considering a proposal to strip the country’s Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor) of the right to operate a portfolio of public sector casinos, reports the Manila Bulletin newspaper.

PhilWeb has had operations overseas.