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Paraguay's Congress has granted final approval to legislation that will update the country's gambling law and enable a more competitive market for online sports betting.
The Chamber of Deputies voted late on Tuesday (December 17) to accept the changes that were made to a pending gambling reform bill by Paraguays Senate when senators sanctioned the legislation last week.
The lower house had already approved in late November, a few weeks after it was submitted to Congress by Paraguays government.
The new legislation updates an existing gambling law of 1997 and, among other changes, will move the oft-criticised national gaming commission,Conajzar, to under the authority of the Paraguayan Tax Department, or DNIT.
The bill designates 13 specific forms of gambling that will be subject to licensing at either the national, local or municipal level.
Both sports betting and online casino are among the offerings that will be subject to national licensing, with no set limit on the number of concessions for the latter, but no more than three available for sports betting.
Online sports betting is currently operated through an exclusive concession twice awarded in contentious circumstances to local company Daruma Sam for its Aposta.la platform.
The bill was amended last week in the Senate to specify that up to three concessions should be available for both sports betting and quiniela numbers games. The initial version of the legislation, as proposed by the government, would have required a minimum of three concessions for all gambling products.
According to the Chamber of Deputies' official news service, two deputies on a special committee evaluating the Senates amendments voiced opposition to the proposed changes to Article 20 of the legislation. However, those deputies were overruled by a majority of the committee before the amended bill was then approved by the full Chamber.
The legislation does not establish tax rates for different forms of gambling, which instead will be set through individual concessions. However, the gambling reform bill does map out how that revenue will be shared among national, departmental and municipal governments.
Municipal governments will continue to license slot machine halls, while Conajzar will issue 20-year concessions for land-based casinos. In line with existing law, only Asunci籀n and regions with a population of more than 250,000 will be permitted to host more than one casino.
Following congressional approval, the new bill still must be signed into law by President Santiago Pe簽a, but that appears to be a formality as his administration presented the reforms to Congress in the first place.
According to at least some observers, it represents the most significant gambling reform in Paraguay in several years and is long overdue.
More than half a dozen bills to reform Paraguays gambling law have been introduced in Congress in recent years but there has not been a political agreement to pass them, Javier Balbuena, an industry consultant and former president of Conajzar, said at the recent SBC Latinoamerica Summit in Miami.
Balbuena said the end of Conajzars status as an independent agency raises an important policy question.
What do we want to do with gaming? Do we want to develop an authority to regulate gaming as an activity or do we want to develop a revenue-generating entity? For me, the first thing is to regulate gaming and then as a consequence of good regulation, income will come for the state, he said.
