PAGCOR president and CEO Rafael A. Francisco said the eight percent increase translates to about P2 bilion to P3 billion. Last year the gaming company also grew by P2 billion to P22 billion in terms of revenues from its operations. "Our revenues were up eight percent in 2005 and this year we expect to see the same growth or higher," Francisco said.

The CEO said PAGCOR will be introducing new games in the next months to boost revenues and income. "What we have been doing is introducing new games, new procedures and our marketing has been very aggressive (focusing more on) tourism or visiting players from Korea, China and Japan."

The Office of the President recently reclaimed control of PAGCOR and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) from the Department of Finance. "Proposals to merge the two never pushed through (in fact) PAGCOR was never put under the supervision of the DoF," explains Francisco.

"Just to correct the record another EO was issued to put us back to the OP," he added. PAGCOR and lottery-operator PCSO are revenue raising agencies.

The proposal to put PAGCOR under DoF supervision almost happened during the time of former Finance Secretary Juanita Amatong. She wanted to review the finances of PAGCOR to better monitor its expenditures. In the meantime, after Amatong, another former finance chief Cesar Purisima wanted to merge the two gaming institutions.

In 2004 President Gloria M. Arroyo signed three executive orders transferring control of PAGCOR to the DoF for revenue supervision.

Malacañang transferred over powers to the DoF after removing the Finance secretary’s chairmanship over another cash cow, which is the Land Bank of the Philippines under presidential order EO 323.

PAGCOR casinos cater to markets known as local or grind players and the government earns from these operations by raising additional taxes.