Can If you ask the experts, the answer is a resounding ‘no’  An ethnic woman and her son on Dong Van Plateau in the northern mountainous Unlike Singapore, The five-star casino-resort The Grand - Ho Tram Strip, which opened on July 26 in Vung Tau as part of a US$4.2-billion tourist development aimed at attracting foreign visitors, has become the sixth casino in Vietnam. A casino-building spree seems looming across the country, where entry barriers for foreign investors are much higher than in neighboring countries, as the government looks to significantly boost tourism and tax revenues amid the economic crisis. “There is not much thought put in the casino model as with “On top of the lack of a critical mass market, Vietnam does not have a proper gaming regulatory environment yet nor a liberal financial regime which are both fundamental requirements,” said Ben Lee, managing partner of IGamiX Management & Consulting Ltd in Singapore. “Why would banks lend to massive projects when the developers can't even show the right documentation in terms of licenses [or] ability to transfer funds?” he said. Of six casinos in While experts acknowledged that With a population of 90 million and an entrenched gambling culture, a rising number of foreign businesses have pushed for major legal change that would allow Vietnamese citizens to enter casinos. But the Vietnamese government has made it crystal clear that this issue would not be up for discussion, enacting a law to take effect in October that will subject casinos to fines of up to VND200 million ($9,500) if they let locals in. By licensing the gambling houses, the government seems convinced that casinos would help boost tourism. But experts do not buy into this. “One needs to see whether existing casinos have been successful in attracting tourists as expected,” Karambelkar said. “The existing casinos have not helped tourism,” she said, referring to the five casinos licensed before Ho Tram. “As a matter of fact, none of these casinos has expanded in the last eighteen years.” “The bidding process, or licensing in ‘Without careful consideration’ Vietnamese provincial governments seem to believe that casinos are silver bullets that develop hitherto isolated areas. They see benefits for locals as the creation of jobs and increased tourism dollars. A vivid example of such philosophy is perhaps the idea of building a casino on Dong Van Plateau in the northern mountainous But it did not win much support from related ministries and drew flak from conservationists who said if built, the casino would destroy the plateau, named a “global geological park” in 2010 as a hub of ethnic culture and a place where the geological history of the formation and development of the Earth can be easily retraced. The province was silent about it before raising the issue again at a meeting of local and central agencies in June. Local authorities sought to assuage fears of environmental damage, and touted it as a silver bullet that could lift locals out of utter poverty. But in the most recent and perhaps most bizarre move, the top leader of Ha Giang has said there was no sign that the casino would be built anytime soon. “So far we’ve had no information about it,” Trieu Tai Vinh, the province’s Party chief, told Vietweek. Asked why his subordinates have started to promote the casino project if there is indeed no plan to go ahead with it, Vinh said: “That’s just their personal ideas and I myself wasn’t even aware of it.” It is not clear how a casino would benefit the needy, and it turns out that Caritas Switzerland, an anti-poverty group that has been working in Quan Ba District (one of the four districts in Dong Van Plateau), said it had not been consulted by the Ha Giang government on any plan for the Dong Van Geopark that included a casino. Experts say the Ha Giang casino plan is emblematic of how over-simplistically local Vietnamese leaders think about licensing a casino in the name of development. "In the race for attracting investment for local economic growth, many mountainous provinces like Ha Giang do not have favorable conditions like their peers in the lowland. They do not have many choices to take,” said Trinh Le Nguyen, executive director of People and Nature Reconciliation, one of “Therefore, sometimes local authorities take any project proposal without careful consideration of its sustainability. Not only environmentally but also economically and socially.” By An Dien, Thanh Nien News |
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