Casino promotion bill prompt news 2017 / When is it going to be approved?

When will the approval of the Casino Implementation Bill be?

( ≫ Click here to check out the flow up to 2016 )



Prime minister, Abe proposed to increase foreign visitors to 40,000,000 people by 2020 and 60,000,000 people by 2030 as a tourism nation in the future.


The crucial condition to making this happen was to approve the Casino Implementation Bill in 2016 and start the construction of IR facilities to open five to 10 years later.



With such a casino bill, it’s been heavily discussed to approve it early by the government party since September 2016 after a year and half of silence, however, the concern of security deterioration and gambling addiction wasn’t able to be wiped out by negative Komei the Clean Government Party, so it was just marching on the same spot.



However, because Komei approved the start of deliberations of IR, there was an assembly of all parties on the 12th of October at the diet member’s office building, things suddenly flipped around.


It turned out that it confirmed cooperation of LDP, the Domestic Party, Komei and the Japan Innovation Party as well as IR promotion diet members, Ichiro Matsui the Mayor of Osaka and lieutenant governors of Hokkaido and Nagasaki who are keen to attract IRs for rural regions to make the casino implementation bill be approved.


Then on the 30th of November, the deliberation was started finally by the Cabinet Committee.



As a result, voting was held on 2nd of December at the House of Representatives’ cabinet committee and the 6th of December at their plenary session, the Democratic Party abstained, the Communist Party attended and disagreed and Komei took an exceptional voluntary vote and it was agreed by majority of the LDP and Japan Innovation Party after all.


Then on the 13th of December, the amendment of the casino promotion bill was voted at the House of Representatives’ cabinet committee and was agreed by majority of the LDP and Japan Innovation Party.



The non government parties including the the Democratic Party tried to prevent the approval and submitted Abe’s non confidence in the cabinet, but LDP tried to extend the period.


Finally, the casino promotion bill was agreed by majority of the LDP and Japan Innovation Party on the 15th of December.






In response to that, the IR Implementation Bill based on the prevention of gambling addiction and IR attraction opening recruitment guideline to the rural public organization will be developed and carried out in the financial year of 2017 and the details will be decided on in October, 2017.



Also, the IR Implementation Bill will be agreed in November or December 2017, a local public organization will be selected, an operator will be selected by the local public organization between 2018 and 2019, the screening of suitability of operators and licenses given will be done by the country, and then the casino resort construction will begin.






So, it sounds like they will start IR operations in two to three places on trial and when the reviewing time comes in seven years after the approval, then it may become a maximum of up to 10 places as a facility on a wide area block possibly based on a regional system.


For that reason, it may become like Australia Casino where they have a facility at each major city.



Well, according to the estimation done by CLSA, the trading company in Hong Kong, if 10 small sized casinos are made throughout Japan in 2024 in Tokyo and Osaka and throughout Japan after 2025, the casino market of Japan will reach 25 billion USD and is estimated to become another big market after Macau plus the Japanese casino market scale by Capital and Innovation Corporation after 2020 is estimated to be about 12 billion USD if there are three IRs and about 22 billion USD if there are 10 casinos.



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