What Do They Know That They Aren’t Telling?
You may need to sit down for this one. Would you believe? Is it even possible to conceive of any government anywhere to just say no to another R21.8Billion? Yes, you read that correctly, that is not a mistake. That’s almost twenty-two billion Rand that the South African government looks to be on the edge of tossing aside.
Here’s what this is all about. As you probably know, many South African online casino fans were all excited last year and even into most of this year. It certainly was beginning to look like the clouds were parting and that South Africa was on the edge of joining many other countries around the world that have already legalized online gambling. Consider, even the United States is slowly but surely relaxing rules and regulations.
In addition, online gambling and online casino action was discussed in depth at the most recent Big Africa summit. In other words, to both South Africans and even outside observers, all evidence was pointing to legalized online gambling sometime in 2015.
Uh, not so much. It seems that the notorious government agency known as the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is taking active steps to forestall and even halt any further moves to legalize online gambling in South Africa. In fact, an online casino industry expert has publicly stated that the DTI is deliberately stalling over the licensing of Internet based online gambling operators.
As of now, DTI spokespersons are claiming that they don’t in fact believe that onine casinos create jobs. Moreover, the DTI went on record to state their concerns over the possible impact the newly licensed online casinos could have on gambling addictions in the country.
This is indeed odd considering that other countries are taking steps in the exact opposite direction. For example, now that online gambling has taken off in the U.K., the revenues from legally regulated online casinos dwarfs the revenue from land based casinos.
In the case of South Africa, the entire gambling market is estimated to be worth R21.8Billion for the fiscal 2013 year. Furthermore, this number is expected to grow to at least R29.5Billion by the year 2018. Get this: that’s only the numbers from so-called legal land based casinos and wagering facilities. What do you suppose will happen when and if South Africa finally allows legal online casino action? Most likely, the South Africa gambling market overall will behave much as it has for the U.K.
So the question remains, why is the South African government turning away funds they desperately need to compete in a global economy?