The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) has said that it expects the local casino industry to post significant revenue growth in 2015 despite China’s increased crackdown against corruption.
According to PAGCOR chairman and CEO Cristino Naguiat Jr., the Philippines is likely to survive the crackdown unscathed, as PAGCOR’s casino model doesn’t rely too heavily on China’s VIP market.
“China is not our number one market,” Naguiat said told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “Of course, more Chinese coming here would be better for us, but of 100 million outbound Chinese tourists, we get less than 1 percent of that. It’s relatively small.”
“There’s a wider mix of nationalities coming here to play in our casinos. It’s not just the Chinese,” Naguiat added.
Naguiat and PAGCOR are projecting another year of double-digit casino revenue growth in the Philippines on the strength of Solaire Manila’s expansion and the opening of City of Dreams Manila. The Philippine casino industry saw its gross gaming revenue increase by 16% in 2014 while VIP and junket players have increased by almost 50%.
Naguiat also believes that the Philippines may have benefited from the construction delays experienced by the casino projects of Andrew Tan’s Alliance Global and Kazuo Okada’s Tiger Resorts & Leisure Entertainment, as there’s no over-capacity in the Philippines casino market that might have been negatively impacted by China’s crackdown.
