Bangkok, Thailand:
Thailand’s cupboard accredited a controversial invoice on Monday to legalise playing in designated “leisure complexes” to spice up tourism and create jobs. The proposed legislation would enable casinos to be arrange inside tourism complexes that will additionally embrace theme parks, water parks, lodges and buying malls.
Playing in Thailand is presently solely authorized on sure state-run horse races and an official lottery, however illicit betting is widespread.
“The goals are to extend income, assist funding in Thailand and remedy unlawful playing,” Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra instructed reporters.
The invoice will go to the Workplace of the Council of State for drafting earlier than being debated and voted on by lawmakers in parliament — a course of that can doubtless take months.
For the reason that finish of the Covid-19 pandemic, which hammered Thailand’s essential tourism trade, the dominion has launched quite a few methods to lure extra guests, corresponding to chopping visa necessities for Chinese language and Indian travellers.
Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat stated the federal government hopes the leisure complexes will finally increase vacationer numbers by 5-10 p.c and create as much as 15,000 new jobs.
The situation for the proposed complexes, and the timetable for his or her development, haven’t been introduced.
Conservative forces in Buddhist-majority Thailand have lengthy resisted strikes to legalise playing, at the same time as shady on line casino complexes have sprung up in neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
The UN Workplace on Medicine and Crime warned in a report final yr that Southeast Asia’s casinos had been “foundational items of the banking structure utilized by organised crime” to launder large volumes of cash.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)