Curbing gambling ills crucial for Abe’s Japan casinos push

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, right, delivers a policy speech during an extraordinary session this week at the lower houses of the parliament in Tokyo

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to legalize casinos may depend on convincing coalition lawmakers the ills of gambling can be curbed.
Members of Komeito, Abe’s Buddhist-backed junior coalition partner, will continue to discuss their stance on a bill to permit casinos to operate in the country, Kiyohiko Toyama, a lawmaker from the party, told reporters yesterday. A separate cross- party group of pro-casino lawmakers seek initial approval of two or three sites, and conditions such as entry fees for Japanese nationals, according to a statement.
While Abe sees casinos as way to boost the world’s third- largest economy and has enough ruling-
party support to pass a bill, the backing of Komeito would help avoid parliamentary obstacles and delays to the legislation. Gaming moguls including Las Vegas Sands Corp. owner Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, chairman of Wynn Resorts Ltd., have said they will invest billions of dollars to build casinos in Japan.
“Within the ruling coalition, a lot does come down to the religious affiliation, and whether the Komeito party will vote on party lines or not,” said Jay Defibaugh, an analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Tokyo. Japan’s casino market could become Asia’s largest after Macau and worth USD40 billion a year as early as 2025, CLSA estimates.
It’s unclear if voting on the casino bill will take place in the current parliament session that ends Nov. 30, Toyama said after a Komeito meeting yesterday, adding the party must decide its response when a vote nears.
Komeito is backed by the Soka Gakkai sect, a lay Buddhist movement founded in Japan and with 12 million practitioners worldwide, according to its website.
Lack of support from key minority parties for the casino bill will mean debate on the proposal will probably be delayed until November and December, Grant Govertsen, a Union Gaming analyst, wrote in a report this month.
More than 5 million Japanese, about 5 percent of the population, are addicted to gambling, the Asahi newspaper reported in August, citing a study by a health ministry panel. About 8.7 percent of adult male Japanese are habitual gamblers, along with 1.8 percent of females, according to the study.Dave McCombs and Takashi Hirokawa, Bloomberg