Brazilian Senate Approves Gambling Expansion Plan

A Brazilian senate committee has approved a recent legislative attempt towards liberalizing the country's gambling market, this includes the authorization of online gambling.

A Special Committee on the National Development (CEDN) has approved the Bill 186 of 2014, where up to 35 casinos could get authorization. This could mean one casino per state, and up to three in some of the larger states at the same time authorization of video lottery and other games, plus, online sports betting, bingo games and casino.

There are only three forms of gambling allowed in Brazil at present lotteries, horseracing and live poker tournaments. Should Bill 186 is approved, then individual Brazilian states would be allowed to have the final say on what form of gambling is permissible within their borders.

Sen. Blairo Maggi authored Bill 186 as part of the Agenda Brazil, this is a package of legislative proposals that is intended to boost government revenue to help their rapidly imploding economy. Bill 186 was approved the same day that the Moody's Investors Service had warned Brazil it was considering downgrading their investment grade rating to junk status.

The bill is now to be put forward to the Comisión Especial de Marco Regulatorio de Juegos to be analysed. If the bill receives a favorable nod, it will then proceed to the full Senate to be voted on, before it is shifted to the lower house for further consideration.

Once it receives a favorable nod within the lower house then it will be presented to President Dilma Rousseff for signature on the bill into law. Ms. Rousseff could be a motivated towards approval as revenue-generating bill, given that Congress had recently voted to impeach her for the alleged 'cooking' of the country's financial books in order to disguise deficits and to ensure her re-election last year.

Ciro Nogueira, who is the sponsor of Bill 186, believes that the new legal gambling framework would generate $4bn annually for government and also give the economy a boost by creating jobs.