4 March 2008
Costa Rica to Prevent a Storm
Posted by Thomas under: General News .
The top Russian casino enterprise, Storm International who have been taking a serious interest in entering the Costa Rican market are going to be subjective to a government block not allowing them to conduct their business in Costa Rica.
The Russian casino giants who are the largest chain group in their sector in Russia are being forced out of Russia due to anti-gambling rules and regulations recently implemented by Russian President Vladimir Putin. See earlier report. With this in mind Storm decided to look abroad for new markets to enter and continue their impressive growth rate with one the destinations set to be Costa Rica.
Vice-President Laura Chinchilla has said the government plans to pass new regulations that will prevent the Russian casino group from entering the Costa Rican market. Chinchilla particularly voiced her concerns that because Storm want to move to Costa Rica because of regulations in their own country, that it give off the impression that Costa Rica is regulation-free, which it is not.
These new regulations are set to be drawn up by the end of week and then implemented after the Semana Santa weekend in a couple weeks time once the government has approved them. Chinchilla said the regulations would not go through the Legislative Assembly as nothing would happen.
The regulations will stop casinos popping up as a singular business, with new casinos only being allowed to open as part of a hotel and not focused upon as their primary form business. The restrictions would include that a only a certain small percentage of a hotel’s floor space can be dedicated to a casino area as well further restrictions on the casinos operations, opening times, alcohol, age limits etc.
The current casinos that are in use across Costa Rica being run solely as a casino, such as Fiesta, will be allowed to continue their business as they have already been established before the new regulations, as well as forcing them to shut would result in the government having to pay out millions of dollars in compensation fees.
Analysts though are doubtful that these regulations will prevent such a giant in the casino world from entering the Costa Rica marketplace. Storm International had already announced that they were interested in moving into the luxury hotel sector and have also made plans afoot to build a hotel in Costa Rica alongside their casino. Although the original plans weren’t to combine these two projects, these new regulations may force that change so that Storm can still set up a casino and stay within the government laws.
(5 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)
Loading ...Similar Articles
One Comment so far...
Rick Carlson Says:
6 March 2008 at 11:16 am.
Wonderful website and great contents.
Thanks for such an informative post. I hope that the government will be firm on this issue. I have been doing some research on living in Costa Rica and found this site, just love it. I also found a few other informative blogs, one is which costaricahq.org that has been very helpful with my research.
I will be back checking for future post.
Rick
Entries
(RSS)