The Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (APECO) said it strongly supports the prohibition of online gambling in the Philippines and of Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGO).
Gil Taway IV, APECO president and chief executive officer, said this has been his position when he assumed office last Oct. 13, 2023.
APECO had an unpleasant experience with a locator which posed as a service provider to gaming operations but was actually operating as a POGO. That locator has vacated Aurora Freeport zone in May.
“It has been the clear and categorical position of new APECO management to pursue course correction initiatives to pivot away from gaming, both online and traditional, operations, that has had little to no positive effect on APECO,” said Taway at a recent Senate hearing days before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced in his State of the Nation Address the ban on POGOs.
According to Taway, that lone POGO locator during the previous management operated and leased the administrative building of APECO.
He said the company, which generated only around 30 jobs, turned the APECO Corporate Campus into a closely guarded enclave. In the process, APECO employees were forced to utilize two vacation villas and three container vans as makeshift office spaces because of the closing off of the administration building.
The reported revenue was only paid during the current management in 2023.
