The conference began with David Moniz, President of the Dominican Association of Gaming Casinos and Country CTO of the CIRSA Group Dominican Republic, speaking on the productive chain of casinos, which, as he explained, “is in tune with the interests of the Dominican Republic and refers to the related economic activities of casinos with the rest of the sectors, generally we are going to associate it with tax issues, but when we started to do research on the topic we realized that there were many ways to go."

The sector in numbers

Moniz highlighted that “the taxes that we consider as part of the gaming and chance sector are equivalent to between 0.5 to 0.6 percent of the total collected in the country and that is equivalent to 2,430 million pesos annually to 3,211 million, approximately in the year 2022 in dollars. We are talking about almost 56 million dollars that our industry produces, of that amount, because the contribution made by the casino and coin machine sector that we have been able to identify by the contributions they make from the casino tax and the machine tax of the currency is equivalent to between 37 to 40 percent of the contribution of the casino industry within the gaming and chance sector. It is worth highlighting that the 0.5 percent that I am talking about of the total revenue from casinos only include direct taxes, they do not include indirect taxes such as ITERIS, the tax on bank transfers, the tax on waste, solid waste, etc. 

Continuing with the statistics of the sector, Moniz highlighted that “in the memory of the first collection made by the internal tax management in 2023, there was an increase from almost 20,000 lottery banking licenses to almost 75,000, I believe this is a consequence of the great work that the Casino Directorate is doing in the recovery of lottery banking and sports banking” and confirmed that “we do not want to give false alarms but we have a market trend, the general market in 2023 that has had a decrease of one 3% in regards to the number of slot machines that are reported” and finally stated that from “the gambling sector we contribute between 37 and 40% of all direct taxes.”

Casinos and job creation

Then Wilfredo Ramírez, head of the Meliá group, spoke, highlighting the gaming industry's ability to contribute to the Dominican Republic's tourism sector.

In this sense, he explained that "currently, as in the tourism sector, casinos attract international visitors, especially from North America and other nationalities, the US represents 93% and other nationalities represent the other differential, with casinos representing 43% of tourists. from the international client, which is very good as a country.”

He also maintained that "the casinos are located within the hotels according to casino regulations and currently the tourist packages offered include the casino part as an attraction for international markets and we drive demand for restaurants, golf courses, of the spas so that this type of clients who demand this modality can also see us as a great attraction and compensate for the added value to their stay”

He also highlighted the generation of jobs that the area produces, explaining that “we have approximately 2,900 to 3,000 employees who are direct and indirect and are in the construction, transportation and commerce sectors: we represent a great contribution to tourism and the transportation sector. "

Then it was the turn of Jorge Gómez, Vice President of the IGC, who deepened the topic that Wilfredo began and clarified “we have to think that the casino sector is directly intertwined with the tourism sector and with the tourist industry, which is one of the most important in the country that The government of the Dominican Republic promotes it as a very important pillar of growth and in the end the casinos are a complement to the tourist offer, the casinos help tourists decide to come to the Dominican Republic to have that offer and the casinos also help to increase the permanence of tourists in the Dominican Republic and this becomes a virtuous circle of value creation for the economy of the Dominican Republic.”

Wilfredo referred to the job creation that this industry produces. “We are generating more than 250 direct jobs,” he said and listed that “we currently have 30 direct jobs, we have invested approximately 80 million pesos in equipment and our production plant, we are expanding with an investment of 100 million pesos, we hope to increase it to 50 employees we process 120 tons of steel and we hope to triple that in the next 6 years and it is a supplier that is not even direct to the industry but is a supplier of mine and I at the same time am a supplier to the industry this is the productive chain ”

Along the same lines, he said that “in the end, every time a new casino is opened or remodeled, it moves a super economy; there are people who are installing carpets, others who are working on lighting, different materials, and that is a chain.”

Then Wilfredo explained that “also part of the productive chain is when we talk about trained labor, there are some industries like ours where we have had to recruit people with technical knowledge in industrial design, software development, electronic design and sometimes it has not necessarily been easy to find them in the country but with the passage of time we have been developing those talents and in the end that evidently generates an increase in production.”

To finish, he argued “I think that one of the main challenges to continue developing the industry and to be able to continue promoting this economic growth is to continue advancing in regulation, a good modern regulatory framework adapted to the needs of the industry, we currently know that sometimes the industry changes quickly and the regulatory framework does not necessarily evolve at the same speed. Therefore, it is one of the great challenges and obviously another challenge is sustained growth because our industry is also affected by changes in tourism trends or even changes in regulatory areas and that can obviously affect the growth of the sector.”