VietNamNet Bridge – A 21-year-old Vietnamese would be old enough to play at domestic casinos, under a draft decree on casino management from the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

MOF, after repeatedly refusing to allow Vietnamese to enter casinos, has finally agreed to open some casinos to citizens.

Article No 10 of the draft decree says foreigners, Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) and Vietnamese citizens 21 years old or older would be able to play at the casinos in Vietnam.

The Prime Minister will determine the detailed requirements and will determine which casinos will be opened to Vietnamese.

After five years of arguments, Vietnam has begun to seriously think about developing casinos for Vietnamese, a “delicate matter” in the past.

Vietnamese have been prohibited in the past to play at casinos, which were only open to foreign travelers, expats and Viet Kieu.

The government of Vietnam was persistent in not allowing Vietnamese to gamble at casinos, even though foreign investors promised to develop multi-billion dollar resorts with casinos if the casinos would admit Vietnamese players.

Only in June 2013 did the Communist Party’s Politburo agree in principle to allow Vietnamese to go to the Van Don Casino in the Van Don Special Economic Zone in Cam Pha District of Quang Ninh Province.

In April 2014, the National Assembly’s Steering Committee showed its agreement to the proposal on allowing Vietnamese to go to casinos. The chair of the National Assembly’s Justice Committee, Nguyen Van Hien, said Vietnam should not hesitate to open casinos to Vietnamese.

Hien said that although the Vietnamese laws prohibit Vietnamese to gamble, the laws cannot prevent Vietnamese from crossing border gates to Cambodia to gamble at casinos in the country.

The Deputy Chair of the National Assembly Uong Chu Luu also thinks it would be better to allow Vietnamese to go to casinos in Vietnam, rather than fail to collect taxes from the Vietnamese who gamble abroad.

Analysts commented that the provisions stipulated in the latest draft decree are less strict than the previous drafts.

The owners or the managers of casinos will have to have at least five years of experience in the business field instead of 10 years of experience as required in previous drafts.

However, the requirement on the scale of casino project has been preserved: investors need to commit a minimum investment capital of $4 billion to be able to set up a casino in Vietnam.

The investors will only receive a license for casino development after they disburse 50 percent of the committed investment capital, or at least $2 billion.

The draft decree also says that investors can have one game table and 10 game machines for every $20 million worth of committed investment capital

Pham Huyen