Sri Lankan casinos under licence system
All casinos, new and old, would have to be henceforth licensed under new regulations to regulate the casino business, officials said.
Several proposals to open multi-million-dollar casinos in Colombo are in the pipeline and the government is preparing to issue a gazette notification with necessary regulations which would make the Casino Business (Regulation) Act passed in 2010 more effective, Finance Ministry sources said. This Act is now being made operational with the new regulations.
Under these rules, no person will be allowed to engage in the business of a casino without a valid license issued by Finance Ministry, and within a specific area to be designated by the Finance Minister by order published in the Gazette, the sources revealed. Currently casinos operate as a normal business while paying taxes under the Betting and Gaming Ordinance.
Violators of the new law will face a fine of US $45,000 and a five-year jail term, a senior official of the Finance Ministry said.
All the casinos will be brought to a single location – the designated zone at D.R. Wijeyawardane Mawatha in Colombo.
However mixed development projects which have a casino component (like the recently announced John Keells investment) could be located anywhere in the island. There are about nine large-scale plush casinos in the commercial capital Colombo and the business is growing.
While there is no system of issuing licenses to start gaming business in the island, the new regulation provides for a license being issued by levying a fee which would be decided later.
Casinos and horse-racing bookies have been operating in Sri Lanka for decades, exploiting loopholes in the law to evade an earlier official ban on gambling. The business has now been legalized with the only issue being the delay in publishing the gazette notification with regulations, the ministry official said.
There are six casinos and 1,094 betting centres which pay taxes at present.
Gaming centres are exempted from Value Added Tax and National Building Tax. These centres pay a 5 per cent tax on the gross monthly collections.
The annual tax payable by casinos earning a minimum of Rs 1 million a month has been increased to Rs 100 million from Rs 50 million, he added.
But this system will change with the new licensing rules which are compulsory, he said.
Sri Lanka’s casinos include the Kollupitiya Casino, Bally’s Club, Bellagio Casino, Continental Club, Crown Club, MGM Club, Star Dust Club, Ritz Club and Tokyo Club.
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