Brazilian presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin has named Rio Grande do Sul state Senator Ana Amélia Lemos as his choice for vice president. Global gaming operators are likely to keep an eye on the campaign and election, as Alckmin has come out in enthusiastic support of a legal integrated resort industry in the country. Recent reports said Alckmin ranks fourth in the running.
According to Games Magazine Brasil, in the past Lemos also has expressed support for casino gaming. In 2015, she said, “Instead of taxing other things, let’s tax gaming as a new resource.”
She reportedly said that in Las Vegas, “all tax collection goes to the Indian community of that region.” Though the assertion was off-base, the point apparently was that gaming taxes can fund beneficial social and environmental programs.
As Lemos stated, “We could have a collection of resources not only for the preservation of important areas, such as the Amazon or other areas of legal or environmental reserves, but also for obtaining a source of financial resources, to help Brazil in this critical moment that we are living.”
The latter part of her statement referred to the punishing three-year recession in Brazil that finally started to ease in 2017. U.S. casino giant Sheldon Adelson of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. has made multiple recent visits to Brazil and has pledged to invest billions in the market when casinos become legal.
Alckmin has won the support of a mix of Progressive, Democratic, Solidarity, Republican and Party of the Republic members. His platform will be pro-business and pro-gaming in the three month run-up to the October elections.
Lemos also said gaming taxes could help fund “the Brazilian public security system,” which she described as one of the “three pillars of support of Brazilian society” along with healthcare and education.
Meanwhile, delaying the legalization of IRs in Brazil has led to the proliferation of clandestine bingo halls in Rio de Janeiro, reported Games. The gaming parlors doubled in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2017. Between January and July 2018 there were 697 reports, compared to 336 last year.
