Casino Resort Licensing Delayed

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The government has acknowledged that no licensing decisions on Japan’s first casino resorts can be expected this year, signaling yet another setback for the controversial initiative.

In response to a question from an opposition lawmaker on whether an announcement should be expected by the end of this year, an official from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which oversees the licensing decisions for the so-called Integrated Resorts (IRs), responded that “from a practical viewpoint it seems quite difficult.”

According to previously published schedules, the central government’s licensing decisions were expected to be announced sometime this autumn, but the fall months passed without any indications.

While the IR Implementation Act of 2018 allows for a maximum of three licenses to be issued, local government candidates fell by the wayside one after another in the past years until only the Osaka and Nagasaki bids now remain standing.

Even with these two serious doubts remain: Osaka’s biggest problem relates to land quality and contamination at its proposed site on the manmade island of Yumeshima; and Nagasaki’s major difficulty relates to the economic viability of the existing plans.

But the broader problem which has underlay most of the difficulties faced by the IR initiative all along is the simple fact that it has never had public support. In fact, most Japanese have always opposed allowing foreign casino firms to operate within the country. Years of trying to get around this fact, to deny it, or to argue that it would eventually be resolved have so far proven to be in vain.

While government officials may not openly admit it, the delay in licensing probably has less to do with the state of negotiations between the national government and the two local government bidders than it does with the fact that the Kishida administration is mired in dangerously low public approval ratings and does not want focus attention at this time on one of its most unpopular initiatives.

By the same token, we can speculate that the decision of IR licensing will probably not come before the unified local elections next April.

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