The proposal indicates that these entertainment places must relocate to three to five-star hotels. It also specifies that those hotels that have built at least 30 rooms, may install a casino as well.
Rodríguez thinks that this law is urgent because it also includes a slots regulation. He is mainly concerned on the fact that children could become addict to those games and, sometimes, they even stop eating in order to invest their money in those appliances.
“The National Assembly cannot allow youths, from a very early age, to be involved in those vices,” he said.
With regards to taxes, the representative said that they are already analyzing how much should casinos pay, because they are not debating the issue deeply. Rodríguez said that nowadays casinos pay their taxes to the Nigaraguan Tourism Institute, Intur, and General Income Direction, DGI.
On the other hand, Rodríguez revealed that online lottery would be regulated with this law, too. The representative explained that the article 6 of this initiative establishes that the National Lottery and the scratch games, for example, are excluded from the proposal.
However, the electronic lottery is not included in these exceptions, in order to allow the investment in that system. Representative Rodríguez commented that there is a particular interest of Canadian citizens that an electronic lottery is approved in Nicaragua. These people, that the representative does not know personally, would have had an interview with the first lady, Rosario Murillo, to ask her support on the issue, he said.
According to Rodríguez, Canadian businessmen have a key interest in the approval of a law that considers electronic lottery, that would be regulated by the Law of Casinos.