| | Excellent Online Casinos News Archive| Online Casinos Future Unclear as Asia bets on land based Casinos | | | Publication Date: 21 Apr 2005 | | A number of Asian countries are easing the restrictions on casinos in hope that Las Vegas style gambling casino will attract more tourists and create more jobs. This week Singapore agreed to build two casinos aimed at tourists and ended a 40-year-old ban. Estimated at $3 billion, the two gambling casinos will feature hotels, restaurants, theme parks and other entertainment services. Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, said that Singapore, a tightly run city-state of four million people, has to be competitive in the Asian tourist market, especially in the internet era where many find online casinos as their best resort.” We cannot stand still," he told parliament. "The whole area is on the move. If we don't make changes, where will we be in 20 years?” Singapore wants to double the number of incoming tourists within 10 years and sees these casinos as the way to achieve that goal.
Other countries in the region, Thailand, Japan and Indonesia for example, are considering gambling casinos as well. The promise of high-spending tourists, tax revenues and new jobs is strong. These countries governments are looking at the gambling casinos industry in Macau, a former Portuguese colony which was returned to Chinese rule in 1999, as an example. Last year Macau's profits from its 17 gambling casinos reached over $5 billion, about the same as Las Vegas. The figures made by the online casino industry are estimated at around the same amount. Most of the gamblers come from mainland China, where casino gambling is banned but still deeply rooted in the local culture. The director of the Center for Gambling Research at the Australian National University, Jan McMillen, said "Macau is trying to set itself up as the Las Vegas of Asia”.
Still, social and religious groups in Asia oppose casinos and organized online gambling on a moral and practical ground. In Singapore, where public debate is normally unheard, over 29,000 people signed a petition against allowing casinos. Former leader Lee Kuan Yew who rejected a similar casino plan in 1965 revealed in his memoirs that his father had been a compulsive blackjack player who hocked his wife's jewelry. but he gave back up to the decision made by Prime Minister Lee, his son, as an economic requirement for Singapore. Government plans are to charge local gamblers an entry fee to discourage those who don’t have the financial means to play, but opponents to the casinos plan say this will not be enough.
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