Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scored a big win in snap general elections earlier this month and has pledged to drive through his economic reform plan, raising hopes a bill to liberalize the country’s casino market may be back on the agenda.
Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito, won 326 seats to maintain a two-thirds majority, although the LDP itself slipped to 291 seats from 295. However, turnout was a record low. The casino bill failed to gain sufficient parliamentary support and was put on hold indefinitely in November amid a political scandal that prompted Abe to dissolve parliament and call snap elections. Abe is a strong proponent of casinos as a tool for boosting tourism revenue.
“Although it may seem obvious, at least to an outsider, from an economic standpoint that they should legalize casinos now as it would be beneficial to the country in terms of creating tax revenue, jobs, tourism, etc., it’s not so obvious to many Japanese people,” Spectrum Asia CEO Paul Bromberg, who has long followed the ups and downs of casino legalization in Japan, told Forbes magazine. “There is a strong undercurrent of opposition, especially because the pro-IR lobby has continued to fail to educate people as to the economic benefits that properly regulated casinos bring.”
