South Africa’s casino lobby says the industry contributed R17.2b (US $1.13b) to the country’s gross domestic product in its most recent fiscal year.
On Monday, the Casino Association of South Africa (CASA) released its annual Survey of Casino Entertainment in South Africa, covering the 2014-15 fiscal year. CASA says this year’s annual contribution to the country’s national economy was up 4.5% from the previous year.
CASA’s figures claim South Africa’s entire gambling industry generated revenue of R24b for the fiscal year, a 9.6% year-on-year improvement. The casino industry accounted for R17.2b of this total, up 4.5% year-on-year. The casino biz also contributed R5.7b to the government in form of taxes, up 3.6% year-on-year.
CASA CEO Themba Ngobese said the figures demonstrated “the important contribution casinos make towards the South African economy.” Ngobese said CASA members’ capital expenditure in the year came to R2.3b despite the country’s economic downturn, which has seen consumers decrease spending on non-essential items like gambling.
Because of this downturn, Ngobese said the government needed to provide CASA members with “a more flexible operating environment and eliminate policies which inhibit investment” in order to safeguard the 64k jobs CASA claims the casino industry directly supports. CASA’s figures show casino employee salaries totalled R3.2b in the fiscal year.
Ngobese also wants the government to “stamp out” illegal online gambling offered by operators located outside the country. A year ago, CASA launched a campaign to educate the public on the alleged hazards of online gambling. The campaign went so far as to set up a snitch line for punters to alert the authorities to come-hither glances from online gambling sites.
Opposition politicians have been trying to get the government to approve, regulate and tax online gambling but the ruling party will have none of it. This summer saw South Africa’s government form a “multi-disciplinary task team” to devise ways of combatting the over 2k gambling sites reportedly conducting business with South African punters.
It’s worth noting that this year’s casino revenue gains are nudging back toward the 10% growth rate posted in 2012-13. So are South Africans heeding the call to keep their gambling offline or was the 0.6% growth in 2013-14 that sparked CASA’s anti-online panic a statistical hiccup?
