An anti-IR group claims it has passed the required minimum 2 per cent of voter signatures necessary to seek a referendum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Japan.- An anti-IR group is continuing to push for a referendum on the development an integrated resort in the city of Osaka despite the plans having already been sent to central government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to GGRAsia,\u00a0the Osaka Prefectural Election Administration Commission has verified at least 146,472 of 208,552 signatures<\/strong> submitted on June 6. That’s enough to reach the threshold of 2 per cent of local voters necessary for a referendum. It is therefore expected that a draft ordinance will be presented in the prefectural assembly with the government’s opinion on the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Osaka prefecture’s governor Hirofumi Yoshimura<\/strong> has always been against the possibility of a referendum, which he has deemed unnecessary. However, he might change his mind. A previous\u00a0request for a referendum<\/a>\u00a0made by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was rejected by 58 out of 83 votes at Osaka\u2019s council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Osaka\u2019s operator partner, the MGM-Orix<\/strong> consortium, has proposed to invest JPY1tn (US$9.1bn)<\/strong> in the planned IR. The proposed site is an artificial island: Dream Island, in Osaka Bay. The project has a target date of opening in 2029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jonathan Halkyard<\/strong>, MGM\u2019s chief financial officer, has said the company hopes to\u00a0start work in early 2023<\/a>. The period for\u00a0IR applications in Japan<\/a>\u00a0closed in April with only Osaka and Nagasaki submitting bids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An anti-IR group claims it has passed the required minimum 2 per cent of voter signatures necessary to seek a referendum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":11734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"An anti-Integrated Resort (IR) group in Osaka, Japan, has successfully gathered sufficient voter signatures to trigger a potential referendum on the proposed JPY1tn MGM-Orix IR project. This development introduces regulatory uncertainty, despite the Osaka government's prior opposition to a public vote and the project's advanced planning stages, impacting the consortium's investment timeline and market entry strategy.","focusai_entities":"MGM-Orix consortium, MGM, Orix, Osaka Prefectural Election Administration Commission, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Hirofumi Yoshimura, Jonathan Halkyard","focusai_location":"Japan, Osaka, Nagasaki, Dream Island","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.9), compliance_legal (0.8), operator_casino (1.0), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Referendum Impact Analysis","query":"What specific legal and financial mechanisms are available to the MGM-Orix consortium to mitigate the risks associated with a potential referendum, and what precedent does this set for future IR developments in Japan?"},{"label":"Regulatory Framework Resilience","query":"How might the central government's IR approval process be re-evaluated or strengthened to preempt local political challenges, ensuring greater certainty for large-scale capital investments and B2B\/B2C licensing?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,16338,158],"tags":[23632],"class_list":["post-31189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news","category-east-asia-news","category-slider-home","tag-integrated-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31189"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31237,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31189\/revisions\/31237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}