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Chile – Chile’s Gaming Board looks for foreign investment in Las Vegas

By - 5 October 2015

The Head of the Chilean Gaming Control Board (SCJ), Renato Hamel, has pointed out the importance of the municipal licences in a round of meetings with a number of casinos operators in Las Vegas.

Speaking at this year’s Global Gaming Expo Mr. Hamel spoke about the licenses that will soon be available in Chile.

“This proposal aims to let the highest number of investors know and become interested in applying for operating permits that will be available in the seven communes which have a municipal license to operate so that there is a high level of competition in order that the municipalities can count on good projects and a high level of investment,” he said.

According to reports in local press, Mr. Hamel met with some of the world’s largest operators in order to highlight the imminent changes to Chile’s gaming sector and has recently met with the mayors of each municipality to discuss the licencing process which will begin in December.

The meeting is the latest as Mr Hamel seeks to let a global audience become more aware of the changes to Chie’s laws which will be the most significant changes to Chile’s gaming laws in many years. In July Mr Hamel pointed out the importance of the municipal licences in a round of meetings in Hong Kong and Macau. The sessions were organised by the Committee on Foreign Investment as part of Chile Week 2015, a trade and Investment seminar attended by 120 local business people.

The issue of the municipal casinos had become increasingly urgent with local lawmakers concerned that they would have soon lost out on millions of dollars of tax revenue from casinos located within their jurisdictions. However earlier this year the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, signed into law new regulations, which extend the licenses of the seven municipal casinos in Chile. The new rules extend the licenses until December 2017 in the districts of Vina del Mar, Arica, Iquique, Puerto Varas, Coquimbo, Pucon and Puerto Natales, which all expired on December 31, 2015.

However, once these licences expire the statute provides that from that date onwards, those municipalities will continue to be a home to a casino for a total of three periods of 15 years each and the new casinos will come under the supervision of the SJC. This will herald in a number of new large scale casinos especially as a number of the municipal casino licenses, such as the licence for Vina del Mar, are located in the most popular local tourists destinations in Chile.

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