www.euroslot-online.com POLAND
Population: 38.4m Under 15: 5.6m Aged 15-64: 27.5m Urban population: 61 percent Major cities:Warsaw (1.7m), Krakow (760,000), Łódz’ (740,000) GDP per capita: $20,600 Business climate: Although ait was the only European Union country to avoid recession in the 2008-09 economic downturn, Poland’s GDP per capita is still around 35 percent below the EU average. Membership has, however, been a major benefit to the country’s economy, despite unemployment generally being some two percent higher than average for the EU. 2010 saw Poland’s inflation reach a low of 2.6 percent, climbing to 4.3 percent in 2011; there is room for improvement and the government can relatively easily stop up leaks in the economy with public spending, as infrastructure such as road and rail is in need of improvement. Weak revenues against rising costs in health, education
and pensions meant a public sector budget deficit of 7.8 percent of GDP in 2010 but the government acted quickly to reduce the deficit to just 2.9 percent of GDP in 2011. Further deficit-busting reforms are planned for 2012-13 alongside reforms to promote business in the country.
Poland’s gaming industry is not a happy one. It is in freefall, with no new gaming licences issued since 2010 following the implementation of a law which prohibited the operation of gaming machines outside casinos, while also more than trebling the amount of tax operators had to pay. The last legal licence expires in 2014, but between now and
then, expect most of the industry to either move underground – resulting in zero tax revenue – or disappear completely. Either way, the end result is the same: next to nothing for the government, unless it has a bold plan up its sleeve. However, much of Europe has been eyeing the introduction of
VLTs to Italy and the infrastructure and ease with which taxes are assessed and collected, not to mention the investment that comes with such a project. And it’s certainly not out of the question for this to happen in a country such as Poland, where the government and populace would clearly benefit from public spending alongside private investment. The 2010 law does not apply to redemption machines that do
not use random-number generators, and Polish trade publication Interplay posits that these may fill the gap left by the disappearance of slot gaming – with the market able to absorb up to 150,000 such machines in the next couple of years.
EASTERN EUROPE MARKET REPORT
APRIL 2013
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