Georgia gambling ad ban gets postponed
The parliaments’ chairman has postponed the implementation of the bill that would set Georgia’s gambling ad ban.
Georgia.- The chairman of the Georgian parliament has decided to postpone the gambling advertising ban proposed bill. Irakly Kobakhidze decided that Levan Gogichaishvili’s proposed legislation will be treated in the future, which is why the Georgia gambling industry should still pay attention to lawmakers.
Mr Gogichaishvili, the legislator who introduced the bill, announced the chairman’s decision and said that there will be a further bill submitted after the government reaches an agreement with different parties. Should the bill’s filing ultimately fail, the member of the parliament said he will still submit his previous proposal to get the Georgia gambling advertisements ban enforced with support or not.
According to Gogichaishbili, the authorities had already stopped the vote on his document two months ago, even after all committees approved it.
The legislature still has a further bill to get the segment regulated to debate, as it concerns the of citizens allowed to bet. According to the proposal, Georgia gambling should be limited to people 25 years old or older, in order to prevent problem gambling among the younger segments.
Back in 2017, the government seemed to be on track to take the prohibition path on online gaming but turned around to set new regulations instead.
As parliamentarians were pushing for the ban, the Ministry of Finance rejected the possibility of being impossible to enforce. Instead, the government decided to work on setting up new requirements for gamblers to make sure there are no underage users, like having to register with the country’s tax service to access iGaming services.
The decision of backing away from an online ban seemed to be related to the government wanting to get its own share of gambling revenue from taxation (potentially worth US$80.6 million). Georgia set up new tax rules starting last January 1 and collected US$58.4 million, 33 per cent more than all the gambling tax take in 2016.
