Cambodia wants to attract foreign investors

The Asian country is pushing for a legislation in a bid to attract foreign investors to its casino industry.

Cambodia.- Cambodia lawmakers are currently pushing for a legislation that would attract foreign investors to its casino and gaming industry. They want to make Cambodia a key gaming centre in South East Asia.

The proposed legislation, which is expected to be passed after the general elections that take place later this year, has been shaped for the past three years. It will oversee an industry that brings the government US$50 million in tax revenues. Officials said that the government was looking to set a new tax rate for casino games at between four and five per cent to match neighbouring rates such as those from Singapore.

Ben Reichel, executive director of the Sydney-listed Donaco International, said: “There’s a lot of unsatisfied demand in the region as a whole. If you look at the number of tables compared to somewhere like the USA, it’s actually a very low number of gaming tables available – which is why there is so much illegal competition going on.”

The local industry has been growing since the late 1990s, and it now features 65 licenced casinos. The Cambodian industry has benefited from restrictions and bans on legal casinos in Thailand and other territories where local gamblers are banned from entering casinos.

Furthermore, arrivals from Chinese tourists in 2017 increased more than 40 per cent to 1.2 million which surpassed Vietnam as the largest source of tourists in Cambodia. “The government has said they want to make China one of their top three – if not number one source of tourism going forward,” said Donaco’s Reichel.