G3-247 Report INDIA
nos. At the moment there are six offshore licences in Goa of which four are operational with a total of 106 tables and 75 slots. The entry fee is Rs3,500 per player of which Rs2,000 goes to the local Goa government. The four casinos are operated by two operators – Pride Group and Deltin Group.
Meanwhile there are nine land based casinos. Gaming fees and taxes were hiked last year when the new Goa government came into power from Rs15 lakh to Rs2.5 crore for landbased casinos and from Rs5 crore to Rs6.5 crore for offshore and many casinos were forced to close down.
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“The amazing thing is very few people seem to have made an issue of this. Frankly it has far reaching consequences for every citizen of India. If one state government can start interfering with the basic rights of its citizens, where does it end?. The continual references to moving casinos out of the Mandovi River are just so much political ‘noise’. It is completely unfeasible for the vessels to operate in anything other than sheltered water. The issue is not one of sea worthiness or otherwise of the vessels, but it is the safety issue regarding moving hundreds of people from shores to ship and back again in the dead of night and in water where wave height between June and end of September can be up to two metres high.” John Snowball, Vice President of Crown Casino Goa.
In 2012/13 the casinos in Goa contributed $2.2m to the state government in form of taxes plus also earned $296,458 from entry fees, $536,463 in annual licence fees from offshore casinos and $0.41 in annual licence fees from onshore casinos.
Last year the Goa courts banned mining depriving the state of taxes and so the gambling sector is more impor- tant than it was despite constant calls against the sector with reports of gambling addiction problems and the ‘corruption’ on local culture.
Another issue is that Indian casinos can only take dollars
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