Green light given to Phu Quoc casino, locals can gamble there

The addition of a casino on Phu Quoc Island at South Vietnam has allegedly been given the green light by police there.

Based on a Thursday report from Deadly online paper, VnExpress, the People’s Committee of Kien Giang Province announced that Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc approved the inclusion, together with the media outlet adding that including the match, VND50 trillion (US$2.14 billion) is your island hotel job ’s overall investment.

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While there are several casinos in the country, Vietnamese citizens were prohibited from gambling within its boundaries unless they possessed a foreign passport. And at Phu Quoc, since March 2014, foreigners are allowed to go to for as many as 30 days without a visa. However, the ban restricting locals from gambling restricted the prospects of any casino there to a mere 20 percent of the people to the Vietnamese island who possess foreign passports, according to previous reports.

Local’s ban lifted:

In spring this past year, the ban was lifted by the authorities. The movement was preceded by a decree at January 2017, which allowed locals who match certain income requirements to gamble at selected casinos on trial basis.

Customers are allegedly needed to be aged 21 or older and have a minimum monthly income of VND10 million (US$427.40). Furthermore, just those casino resorts possessing a complete minimum capital investment of US$2 billion, which includes both gambling and non-gaming facilities, are eligible to permit entry to sailors to gamble.

Estimated completion date:

Based on the media report, the under-construction hotel, also includes hotels, convention facilities and stores, is slated to be finished by 2021. Whether or not the public would be welcome at the casino portion, was uncertain, however.

In November 2016, Professor Augustine Ha Ton Vinh (pictured), an expert on the country’s gambling business, told GGRAsia, about the strategy by Vietnam’s Politburo to permit locals to gamble “on a trial basis for 3 years,” at two casinos, one located in Van Don Special Economic Zone at Ha Long Bay North Vietnam and the other on Phu Quoc Island, according to the news bureau.  According to a research conducted by Ton Vinh, the country loses as much as $800 million in tax revenues each year from Deadly gamblers due to the ban cross the border to Cambodia.

Based on VnExpress, the average annual income in Vietnam was around $2,200 last year.