Cabo Verde: Gambling tax collects 21.6% more until April YoY
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The tourism recovery in Cabo Verde continues to increase revenue from the gambling tax, which applies to the only casino operating in the archipelago, on the island of Sal, increasing by 21.6% until April, compared to 2022.
According to data compiled today by Lusa from the ministry of finance’s budget execution report, from January to April, this tax earned the state coffers 19 million escudos (€172,000), but still below the amount prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, this increase, compared to 16 million escudos (€145,000) in the first four months of 2022, reflects “the dynamism of tourism activity” in that period, the report reads.
In the budget for 2023, the government included a forecast of collecting 60 million escudos (€542,000) from this tax, and in four months, it obtained 31.4% of that amount.
At Casino Royal, in Santa Maria, the cards and roulette returned in the last year to the tables, and more than eighty workers resumed in recent months a business that involves more than 150 players daily on the island of Sal after ten months of forced stop by the pandemic, as Lusa noted earlier.
“Everything went wrong in March 2020. It was a nightmare, specifically for our industry related to hotels, to entertainment in general. It was a total disaster, the country closed its borders for ten months, and for ten months, we were out of work. But we took the decision to keep all the workers, all the salaries”, explained at the time to Lusa the French businessman Jacques Monnier, who dreamed and built the Casino Royal and is now trying to replicate the investment with the installation of a second casino in São Vicente.
With 85 slot machines and ten live gambling tables, the casino in Sal opened its doors in December 2016 after a private investment of almost €5 million.
The government plans to grant a 25-year concession for the exploitation of games of chance in the Gaming Zone on the island of São Vicente, which will be the third in the country (besides Santiago, which plans to install a casino in Praia, which has not been built for several years).
The competitors for the concession of the São Vicente Gaming Zone had until the end of April to submit proposals, including Jacques Monnier, which has also advanced.
According to the announcement of the opening of the tender, published in February in the Official Bulletin by the Ministry of Tourism and Transport, the highest value of the variable part of the premium payable to the State will have a weight of 15% in the final evaluation of the proposals, the highest volume of investment 20%, the counterparts 10%, the experience of those involved 10%, the shortest time expected to start operating 10%, the enhancement and diversification of the tourism offer 20%, and the highest volume of jobs created 15%.
According to a government regulatory decree, which came into force on 18 February, authorising the opening of this tender, in practice, it will lead to the construction of the country’s second casino.
“It is, therefore, time to resume the expanded concessions project, meeting the efforts of tour operators who continue to see gambling as the element that can make a difference in the demand for the tourism product Cabo Verde and the growth, equipping and competence of the Inspectorate General of Gaming, as the public body responsible for regulation and supervision of the activity,” said the decree previously reported by Lusa.
The concession for the operation of games of chance in the São Vicente gambling zone for 25 years will then be awarded “based on the most economically advantageous proposal,” including the value proposed for the variable part of the prize, the financial capacity of the competitor, the nature and value of the proposed public interest investments, the impact of the proposed tourist, social and cultural initiatives, the volume of employment proposed to be generated, both in gambling activities and in related or associated activities.
