Local owners not yet ID’d
Three news casinos have been approved for development in Cambodia. They will be located in the country’s Takeo Province along the border with Vietnam, and will mostly serve Vietnamese citizens, who are not allowed to gamble in their home country.
According to the Phnom Penh Post, Ros Phearun, deputy director of the finance industry department at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, did not identify the owners beyond saying the casinos would be locally owned.
Cambodia also has casinos on its border with Thailand serving visitors from that country, reported GGRAsia. A number of the country’s border casinos are locally owned, but larger firms are also in play. Entertainment Gaming Asia Inc. is active on the Thai border, and plans to grow its presence in the region. Donaco International Ltd. also plans to develop a casino or casinos on the Cambodian-Thai border. The biggest investor in the Cambodian market is Hong Kong-listed NagaCorp Ltd., which has a monopoly in its NagaWorld casino, located in the capital city of Phnom Penh.
Last year, the country’s gaming industry generated US$25 million in taxes from a total of 59 casinos. That’s a 12 percent increase over 2013. Its biggest tourism market is Vietnam, with 900,000 Vietnamese visiting in 2014, according to Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism.
