Supplier News
Chile – Chile Gaming Board comes under fire for new rules
By Phil - 12 October 2015
The Chilean Gaming Control Board (SJC) has come under fire over new rules regarding regulations over the processing and granting of licences for casinos.
Operators used a recent public consultation process to express their fears and anger over new laws when the board received comments from the industry and the general public, over recent proposals made by the Ministry of Finance. The legislative proposal, which will repeal the Supreme Decree No. 211 of 2005, was also posted on the SCJ for consultation.
The public consultation regards the recent enactment of Law No. 20,856, which introduces amendments to gaming Law No. 19,995. The amendments extend the municipal licenses until December 2017 and modifies the allocation mechanism for operating permits. This includes both the technical and financial parameters for licences made by future applicants.
According to Enjoy in a written statement the new rules ignored the fact that investments had already been made by current operators and that the renewal of licences as laid out in the new law did not favour those operators which had already invested in Chile. Instead taxes had been added for the municipal localities where they are located which constituted “an alteration to the rules defined for industry investment.” This according to Enjoy could seriously “damage the property and interests of these companies.”
Other land based operators joined suit with operators of the Monticello casino, the largest casino in Chile, arguing that the new law favoured new entrants to the market and discriminated against operators who are already in the region as it does not take into account “for the purposes of technical evaluation of the bids submitted, infrastructure and investments made by existing operators.”
The company also argued that the new law discriminated against foreign investment as it established arbitrary requirements to “limit the participation of stakeholders who are part of foreign conglomerates, producing a perverse disincentive effect on the participation of large conglomerates in this industry.”
The growing controversy comes after President Michelle Bachelet signed into law new regulations, which extend the licenses of the seven municipal casinos in Chile earlier this year. The new rules extend the licenses until December 2017 in the districts of Vina del Mar, Arica, Iquique, Puerto Varas, Coquimbo, Pucon and Puerto Natales, which all expired on December 31, 2015.
However, once these licences expire the statute provides that from that date onwards, those municipalities will continue to be a home to a casino for a total of three periods of 15 years each and the new casinos will come under the supervision of the SJC. This will herald in a number of new large scale casinos especially as a number of the municipal casino licenses, such as the licence for Vina del Mar, are located in the most popular local tourists destinations.
