Reports LATIN AMERICAN FOCUS
The main purpose of casinos would be to encourage tourism and add to tourist infrastructure in the region. It was estimated that within a very short time at least thirty new casinos would be up and running in Venezuela. Additionally bingo halls would be permitted as part of hotels and in common with casinos would only be permitted once locals approved of their establishment via a referendum.
Maduro says he wants sanctions to be lifted by the Biden administration and has signalled a change of approach reflected by the liberalisation of the economy in the last few years. In February 2020, Venezuela began allowing companies to raise capital in foreign currency. Tis seems to be paying off slowly.
Credit Suisse recently said it expected 2021 growth to stand at 8.5 per cent and estimated a further expansion of 4.5 per cent in 2022. In 2021 Venezuela almost doubled its oil production. Te bank said that this as well as increasing imports and tax revenues were some of the factors behind economic growth. While Venezuela’s annual inflation rate hit 686.4 per cent in 2021
CASINOS
All of this has had a profound effect on the gambling industry. In 1996, Venezuela passed a gaming law that allowed for casinos to be built in five star hotels with a minimum of 200 rooms. Before the act bingo halls and casinos were stand alone establishments located outside of tourist zones.
Te main purpose of casinos would be to encourage tourism and add to tourist infrastructure in the region. It was estimated that within a very short time at least thirty new casinos would be up and running in Venezuela. Additionally, bingo halls would be permitted as part of hotels and in common with casinos would only be permitted once locals approved of their establishment via a referendum.
However, the emergence of a legal gaming industry was short lived. Tree years after the act was passed and Hugo Chávez was elected to power. Chavez did not ban casinos or bingo halls
P74 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
outright but he repeatedly stated that he was opposed to gaming on principle and his years in power saw a sustained attack on the industry.
Tis came in the form of closures after onsite inspections and raids. Hugo Chavez banned the importation of slot machines in 2007 and later that year he announced that he and his cabinet would take “all the measures necessary to eliminate places of prostitution, drug dealing, casinos and bingos – which are often visited by people belonging to the higher classes.” He also announced major tax hikes for all sectors of the gambling industry in 2011.
Illegal gambling continued to thrive during this time and there were still a great number of stand alone slot parlours and casinos dotted all over
the country especially in Caracas many of which advertised themselves as bingo halls. In most cases when a casino or slot parlour had fallen under the scrutiny of the gaming control board it was able to remain open due to individual stays of closure granted by local courts or by the local municipalities where they were located.
In order to clamp down further in 2011 Chavez put the National Commission of Casinos, Bingo Halls and Slot Machines (CNC) under the Ministry of Justice - a government department which was charged with coordinating and evaluating policy which effects security, order and crime prevention. Tat same year the CNC closed down almost all of the bingo halls and slot parlours in the country and revoked licences
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