The Russian State Duma has approved a bill to legalize casinos in Crimea and Sochi in a bid to boost tourism and attract investment.
The Crimea is a special concern as Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine earlier this year has saddled it with an ailing economy and a cash-strapped government dependent on federal subsidies.
“The creation of a gambling zone in Crimea will attract additional investment to the region, create jobs and improve the tax base,” said high-ranking Duma member Anatoly Karpov.
The zone, most likely in the Black Sea resort city of Yalta, will add the equivalent of US$720 million to the economy, according to analysts cited by news agency ITAR-TASS, which reports that “many potential investors” have expressed interest.
The Sochi zone, approved in part to recoup massive losses from the 2014 Winter Olympics, most likely will be located in Gornaya Karusel, which is part of an underperforming resort area called Esto-Sadok Krasnaya Polyana.
The Duma, at the urging of President Vladimir Putin, closed a flourishing casino industry based in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2009 and exiled the industry to four outlying zones: Kaliningrad in European Russia, the southern Don-Rostov region near the Black Sea, Altai in Central Asia and a region around the country’s main Pacific coast city of Vladivostok in the Far East.
None as yet has attracted the resort-scale investment the government sought, although separate plans are in the works by Macau casino mogul Lawrence Ho and Cambodia’s NagaCorp. to develop casinos around Vladivostok catering to the northern China market.
The prospects are promising, though, says Smile Expo, which is staging a one-day conference in Yalta on August 22 to assess them. Smile, which produces the annual trade show Russian Gaming Week in Moscow, says it noticed a “great interest” in Crimea during the event.
The Crimea Gaming Congress, as it’s called, will focus on the potential of the zone and the opportunities for investors.
