Insight
JAPAN Integrated Resorts
Procedures and criteria for the approval of integrated resorts
Masayuki Fukuda Masayuki Fukuda is a partner at Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu. He has an LL.M. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is qualified to practise in Tokyo and New York. Recently, he has been intensively involved in the area of Japanese casinos/gambling laws and advises casino/gaming-related regulatory and transactional matters for international and domestic corporate clients. He has extensive experience and skills in finance and real estate laws and transactions for international/domestic banks and other corporate clients. He is the author of ‘The International Comparative Legal Guides to: Gambling 2020 Japan’ (ICLG, November 2019) and other articles concerning casinos and gambling laws.
www.noandt.com
masayuki_fukuda@noandt.com
On December 18, 2020, the Cabinet published an ordinance which sets forth that an application for IR Area approval may be made from October 1 2021 through April 28 2022. On the same date, the Minister published the Basic Policy for Development of IR Areas (the Basic Policy) which sets forth the basic procedure and criteria for application and approval of IR Area.
P62 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
Under the Specified Integrated Resort (IR) Promotion Law and the Specified IR Implementation Law (the ‘IR Laws’), which were enacted in 2016 and 2018, respectively, up to three IR Areas (including one casino per each IR Area) will be approved by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (the ‘Minister’).
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the schedule of the IR application for approval and its examination process has been substantially delayed. On December 18, 2020, the Cabinet published an ordinance which sets forth that an application for IR Area approval may be made from October 1 2021 through April 28 2022. On the same date, the Minister published the Basic Policy for Development of IR Areas (the Basic Policy) which sets forth the basic procedure and criteria for application and approval of IR Area.
An application for approval of IR Area shall be made
jointly by a candidate prefecture (including a major city designated under the Local Autonomy Act) and a private business operator. Naturally, prior to making such application, each candidate prefecture will have to select a private business operator as its IR business partner by way of an open bidding to be made in accordance with such prefecture’s own Implementation Policy for Development of IR Areas (the Implementation Policy) which shall be enacted in line with the Basic Policy. It is expected that such selection will be made around summer to autumn of 2021. Please note that some prominent candidate prefectures have already published their (almost
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