Australian casino operator in final talks with SL Govt.
View(s):Crown Ltd, the Australian-based casino investor, said this week that it is in final negotiations with the Sri Lankan Government and local authorities over the country’s first luxury integrated resort in Colombo.
“… (we) are hopeful that the Sri Lankan Parliament will soon debate the final regulatory and tax framework allowing the project to proceed,” said Crown Chairman James Packer speaking at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday.
The Crown Sri Lanka Resort will be a 5-star facility with approximately 450 rooms and suites, signature dining experiences and entertainment offerings, conferencing and event spaces, gaming areas, retail outlets and a specially designed water feature attraction on the Beira Lake.
The project has run into stormy waters with religious groups in conservative Sri Lanka and coalition partners in the ruling party vehemently opposing it and the latter threatening to pull out support. The opposition United National Party is also not in favour of the project. The latest protest has come via an online petition against the project initiated by the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka (see box story).
The opposition is to both Packer’s casino and the John Keells Holdings’ integrated project which also includes a casino. In his remarks to shareholders, Mr. Packer said that Crown was looking at the rise of the middle class in other parts of Asia, including India.
He said the ‘Crown Sri Lanka’ project is a ‘must-see’ tourist resort located on the Beira Lake in the heart of the Colombo hotel district.
This resort would help redefine luxury tourism in Sri Lanka and play a significant role in helping to drive increased international in-bound tourism, especially from the emerging middle classes in India, he said.
“Sri Lanka is a beautiful and unique country, it has overcome a great deal of adversity and is growing strongly, I am confident it has a very bright future. I am extremely excited about working together with the Sri Lankan people, because the country has huge tourism appeal and the potential to develop a mass traveller market,” he said, adding that the Lankan economy will benefit greatly from the project and the people of Colombo will gain approximately 2500 jobs at the resort and benefit from the major impact on the livelihoods of countless job seekers and families. Referring to the opportunity in Asia, he said China has now lifted 500 million of its citizens out of poverty in a very short timeframe.
This rise in living standards is the key to the development of a new demographic, a group of people that will have a profound impact on global economic growth for decades to come, the Chinese middle class.
“I have said this time and time again. China’s middle class will change the world. There are over 300 million middle class consumers in China today – equal to almost the entire population of the US and by 2030, China is expected to have 1.4 billion middle class consumers. To put this in perspective, it is forecast that the middle class of the US and Europe combined will only be about 780 million. Through their spending power and tastes, this Chinese middle class will profoundly alter every aspect of our economy,” Mr. Packer noted.
| Online petition urges President to scrap casino plan for Sri Lanka
An online petition urging President Mahinda Rajapaksa to abandon the plan to allow investors to set up new casinos in Sri Lanka has been launched by the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka. The ‘Stop casinos in Sri Lanka petition’ calls on the President and the “incumbent government to immediately stop the concessions proposed to be granted to hotel projects which will house casinos in Colombo. We also call upon the legislators to immediate ban all forms of gambling including casinos in Sri Lanka as it is against the teachings of all major religions.” The petition, seeking signatories of upto 100,000, says that Sri Lanka passed a law approving the setting up of casinos in 2010 and since then a number of small scale casinos have been in operation. This has caused major social problems including sex trade, alcohol and drug abuse, gun culture and many cultural conflicts. It said the government is now seeking to approve major casino projects under Section 3(4) of the Strategic Development Projects Act, No. 14 of 2008 as amended which includes tax relief for Casino Hotel Projects. “This will cause social turmoil and we need to petition the government to first stop the concessions and secondly to ban all forms of gambling including casinos as it is against the teachings of all major religions in Sri Lanka,” it said. |