The new committee is to additionally investigate where such gambling-friendly facilities could be located with potential sites in the cities of Bangkok and Pattaya City among the front-runners followed by locales in the southern communities of Phuket and Krabi. The government of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin is known to be interested in boosting the nation’s economy through tourism and earlier suggested that such liberalized venues could raise as much as $3 billion a year via an envisioned 30% tax rate. This 60-strong committee is set to examine Thailand’s existing policies on gambling and evaluate whether to allow local entertainment complexes to feature casinos.
The Asian country’s parliament recently passed a measure with no objections that is to create an official committee tasked with investigating potential reforms to the Gambling Act of 1935, which currently bans land-based casinos while limiting sports betting to horse racing and government-sanctioned lotteries.
The long-standing prohibition on casino gambling in Thailand could soon be a thing of the past as the nation of some 69 million people looks to rebuild its economy by becoming a high-end luxury destination for affluent travelers.
