Philippine Senator Mark Villar assured on Friday that workers in the Special Category Business Process Outsourcing (SCBPO) will not be affected by the comprehensive ban on online gambling industries.
Villar made the assurance after inspecting the SCBPO located in Aseana, Barangay City, together with Senator Zhang Qiaowei and Al Tengco, chairman of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.
Villar stated: "At the next Senate hearing, our SCBPO workers are assured that they will not be among the businesses to be shut down by the end of the year. Our compatriots will not lose their jobs."
Villar said he fully supports the closure of illegal online gambling companies, but he will ensure the effective implementation of the president's instructions and guarantee that no Filipinos will be affected.
The chairman of the Senate Committee on Gaming and Entertainment conducted this inspection to better understand the operations of SCBPO.
He said: "We conducted this inspection to understand how SCBPO operates and how it differs from online gambling companies that will be closed by the end of the year."
Tengco stated that SCBPO, regulated by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, employs over 4900 Filipino workers and 137 foreign employees.
He said: "In SCBPO, according to the guidelines of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, 95% must be Filipino employees. So, this is the huge difference between online gambling companies and SCBPO."
He mentioned that if all SCBPOs under all investment promotion agencies are included, the total number of Filipino employees would reach 10,000.
He also clarified that SCBPO only provides services to overseas physical gambling enterprises and does not participate in accepting bets.
Following the announcement of a comprehensive ban on online gambling companies in his third State of the Nation Address in July, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation temporarily suspended the issuance of new licenses to SCBPOs.
Meanwhile, Senator Zhang Qiaowei stated that a holistic approach is needed to effectively implement the president's directive to ban all online gambling operations.
He said at a press conference on Friday: "The approach should be comprehensive, covering all aspects of the presidential declaration. The ultimate goal is to smoothly end the online gambling business in the Philippines."
He emphasized that the focus should not exceed the entities licensed by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, noting that according to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, there are currently about 200 active illegal online gambling hubs in the Philippines.
Zhang Qiaowei emphasized that law enforcement agencies need to target illegal online gambling companies still in operation to ensure their complete eradication.
He stated that the Bureau of Internal Revenue should closely coordinate with the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation to determine the value of the total gambling revenue generated by each online gambling licensee (IGL, the current name for POGO).
Zhang Qiaowei pointed out that past congressional hearings have shown a tax gap of 2 billion to 5 billion pesos, due to discrepancies between the total gambling revenue reported to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation and the tax data reported to the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
He said: "Total gambling revenue is the basis for paying taxes to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, but the regulatory agency, as a regulator, has mechanisms to verify the actual total gambling revenue. However, the declarations submitted to the Bureau of Internal Revenue are often underestimated. If they have unpaid taxes and have already left, how can we recover them?"
Zhang Qiaowei also noted that there is a discrepancy between the number of foreign employment permits issued by the Immigration Bureau and the number of work permits issued to foreign employees in the online gambling industry by the Department of Labor.
The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation reported that as of July, the online gambling industry had a total of 26,431 foreign workers.
However, the Department of Labor reported that only 15,819 foreign employment permits were issued this year.
