The Philippines will stop the operations of 175 offshore gambling firms and deport about 40,000 Chinese workers as part of a crackdown on the online gaming industry. DoJ Assistant Spokesperson Mico Clavano mentioned the crackdown was \u201ctriggered by reports of murder, kidnapping and other crimes committed by Chinese nationals against fellow Chinese nationals\u201d. The sector emerged in the Philippines in 2016 and grew rapidly as operators took advantage on the country\u2019s liberal gaming laws to target customers in China, where gambling is banned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC) estimates that the complete exit of the POGO industry would leave vacant 1.05 million square meters of office space and PHP 8.9 billion in foregone annual rent. The sector employs 201,000 Chinese and 111,000 Filipinos and delivers around P190 billion to the local economy each year. LPC reported last week that once POGOs leave completely, they expect office lease rates to drop between 55 \u2013 80%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our View:<\/strong> Further delay in the recovery of property firms. We\u2019ve mentioned before that POGOs leaving will increase office vacancy rate to 18.2%. While property firms such as ALI, MEG and RLC have minimal exposure to POGOs versus DD and FLI, an oversupply in office spaces and the lack of upward pressure on rental rates will prolong the recovery of the entire office sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lower rental rates could potentially attract BPO firms moving forward, however the government\u2019s decision to effectively allow BPO firms to work from home indefinitely could affect BPO\u2019s taking up office spaces. Furthermore, the high interest rate environment continues to dampen our outlook on property. Higher cancellations have plagued the residential sector and are expected to remain elevated for the rest of the year. Though we see the mall sector continuing a strong recovery for 2H2022 due to eased restrictions and higher foot traffic, headwinds from the residential and office sectors will continue to persist. As a result, we remain underweight on property<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s a commentary on an important issue or event affecting the stock market <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-reports","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317657"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320499,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317657\/revisions\/320499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pinoyinvestor.com\/smartinvestor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}