BPAP Says Pogos Not Considered BPO Because Of These Reasons
POGOs NOT CONSIDERED BPO – There had been a heated debate following the approval of the reopening of POGOs.
The Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) have been a controversial industry for several years. As such, POGOs have been involved with shady dealings, unpaid taxes, and many more violations.
However, these violations were set aside allowing POGOs to run operations. Even under quarantine, they were allowed to operate after the PACGOR chairperson said POGOS were part of the BPO industry.
Following this, the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) clarified that POGOS cannot be considered as part of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Their statement regarding the issue was posted on CNN’s Twitter page.
The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) would like to have it clarified that as far as the IT-BPM industry is concerned, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators or POGOs, as they are commonly called, cannot be considered as Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) based on the following key differences:
- BPOs are registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) or the Board of Investments (BOI). Meanwhile, POGOs are registered under the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Cooperation (PAGCOR).
- While BPOs and POGOs share an offshore nature, POGOs do operations offshore because betting and gambling functions are disallowed in their respective shores.
- IT-enabled BPO jobs BPO companies create are of much higher value, requiring a range of technical domain and soft skills.
- BPOs come to the Philippines to utilize the skills of the Filipino people, English and technical skills and customer service orientation. In turn, this benefited millions of Filipinos by providing better employments opportunities.
- Meanwhile, POGOs have the majority of their staff coming from foreign labor brought to the country to support their operations.
Lastly, POGOs are not part of the annual IT-BPO Headcount and Revenue report, which in 2019 ended with 1.3 M direct employees and $26.3B in revenues.
