SINGAPORE: Casino Plans Stir Debate in Otherwise Reticent Society

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE, Jan 28 2005 (IPS) - The Singapore government’s plans to develop an integrated entertainment resort with a casino as its centrepiece, to attract more tourists to this tiny island nation, has triggered a rare public debate on a state-sponsored initiative.

In a country known for its politically apathetic population, which seldom speaks out against government policies, the proposal to build the country’s first legal casino has attracted a storm of protests. Even the government acknowledges there is opposition to it and seems to encourage debate on this hot social issue.

Senior Minister for Trade and Industry Vivian Balakrishnan who has received some 1,200 letters from people protesting the project since it was officially mooted six months ago said that ”Singapore is moving its discussion of national issues up one notch”.

An online petition against the casino started in mid-December – by a group of Singaporeans calling themselves Families Against The Casino Threat in Singapore or FACTS -has so far attracted over 19,000 signatures in a country of four million people.

Speaking on ‘Radio Singapore International’ recently, Balakrishnan argued that what the government is proposing is a ”large scale iconic integrated entertainment resort, which would be a tourist icon that would put us on the tourist road map” where gambling is a ”very small component of a much larger whole”.

In calling for applications two weeks ago, from local and foreign developers, to build the coastal resort, the government set down various conditions that would restrict the local population from gambling at the casino.

Among them is a daily fee of 100 Singapore dollars (61 U.S. dollars) or an annual fee of 2,000 Singapore dollars (1,225 U.S. dollars) for Singapore residents to enter the casino. There is also a ban on advertising the casino in local media and the extension of credit to Singaporeans who want to gamble. On the other hand, however, the government is offering a ‘low’ tax rate of 15 percent on casino revenue, to attract foreign investors to the project.

The government has already set aside a two billion Singapore dollar (1.2 billion U.S. dollar) fund to develop the tourism industry here to double the visitors to the island state over the next 10 years. The casino cum resort development is seen as a crucial part of this strategy to compete against regional competitors.

Singapore Management University’s associate professor Winston Koh predicts that a casino should add 500 million Singapore dollars (306 million U.S. dollars) to the nation’s GDP.

But many community and religious leaders argue that this would be offset by the social cost to the community.

The Hindu Endowment Board’s chairman V.R Nathan said that his group does not support any form of gambling and ” (despite) whatever controls there are in place, we should tell citizens clearly not to get involved in gambling.”

Singapore’s National Council of Churches has issued a statement on the casino issue arguing that a ”country which may pride itself on having the best entertainment resort with gambling facilities is unlikely to be a wholesome family-friendly society, which our government seeks to advance”. They have also pointed out that Singapore is not such a poor country, which needs revenue from casinos to increase its GDP.

Nonetheless, according to a community survey by the Institute of Policy Studies, Singaporeans are more concerned about the proposed casino eroding their value system rather than its social cost.

”When you focus on the social impact, the results (of the poll) seem to suggest that people think this can be managed. But once you start moving into the question of values, the larger group feels it is not easily handled,” said the institute’s research fellow Gillian Koh.

According to a survey done by U.S. consultants The Innovation Group, Singaporeans spend nearly one billion U.S. dollars a year in overseas casinos. Other local surveys have indicated that Singaporeans are heavy gamblers, served by state-controlled lotteries, sports betting and horse racing, which raised an estimated 1.5 billion Singapore dollars (918 million U.S. dollars) in gambling taxes for the Singapore government in 2002 and 2003.

The Singapore government is however targeting the regional tourism market where industry sources predict Asians will spent 23 billion U.S. dollars a year on gambling by 2010.

Macau has opened two new casinos to tap into this market and last month Malaysia’s Genting Resort Casino operators bought into a Britain-based gambling company. South Korea, Laos and Philippines operate legal casinos, while the neighbouring Indonesian island of Batam has a number of illegal casinos, with Singapore-owned cruise ships ferrying tourists to the resorts.

Rich Mirman, senior vice president of Harrah Entertainment Inc, one of the largest U.S. casino operators said in a recent media interview that Singapore’s legalising of casinos could be a catalyst for other Asian countries to relax their restrictions on gambling. ”The market we are most interested at this point is Singapore,” he said. ”It’s a market we want to be in and we want to set up a beachhead, a jumping-in point for Asia.”

Mirman believes that Singapore’s decision could help in the way casinos are perceived in other Asian countries.

But, others fear that a casino will attract criminals and money launderers to a country, which is comparatively crime-free by regional standards.

”If a gambler brings in one million dollars will the casino ask him how he got it?” asks retired stockbroker N Narayan. ”More likely, it will assign him a special room, ply him with free liquor and women, and hope to get some of that money.”