The Chinese embassy denied placing the Philippines on a tourism blacklist due to the presence of POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations). READ:
“The report of ‘tourist blacklist’ is misinformation. China has not placed the Philippines on its blacklist for tourism,” the embassy said in a statement issued late Tuesday evening.
“Ambassador Huang said the Philippines now is part of a blacklist of tourist sites because they do not know if the tourist will be joining POGO operations and they do not know if the Chinese nationals who go to the Philippines will be safe from illegal activities being done by the triad, by the syndicates operating POGO. They may also be kidnapped, mistaken as POGO operators,” he added.
“The Chinese government is against any forms of gambling including POGO or online gambling,” Zubiri said. The embassy said it appreciated that Philippine law enforcement agencies have rescued a number of Chinese citizens and shut down some POGO companies during their operations. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, close to two million Chinese nationals traveled to the Philippines in 2019, making Chinathe second largest source of tourists.”
Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno has said he supports ending POGO activities because of the “social cost” associated with the industry. Diokno said it is time for the country to pursue investments that will create value and high-quality jobs for Filipinos. “So what they threatened to stop was actually, first, the tourism, the Chinese tourists coming into the Philippines and they have singled out Cambodia and the Philippines for that matter. Cambodia actually quickly banned the industry but the Philippines did not heed China’s call,” she added.
These assessments were based on the AMLC’s statement in March 2020 which showed that P14 billion of P54 billion POGO transactions between 2017 and 2019 “were dubbed as suspicious transactions.”On the other hand, an association of 16 licensed POGOs and 68 service providers told the Senate that some P62 billion has flowed into the nation’s coffers over the last six years because of POGOs.
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