Amendments to Serbia's gaming laws, which are likely to be adopted by the end of the month, ought to make the market more attractive to investors, it has been claimed.
Serbia boasts 1,766 gaming halls and 1,240 betting shops but, to date, only a single casino, Grand Casino Beograd, in the capital Belgrade. JAKTA, the Serbian association of gaming operators, authorised technicians and producers of slot machines and equipment, estimates that there are more than 17,000 slot machines currently in operation throughout the country.
Besides the one state-owned lottery company and Grand Casino Beograd, there are 23 licence holders for betting shops and 76 licence holders for gaming halls.
Under the new rules being discussed, licence holders will be expected to meet certain requirements for obtaining approval for games of chance and will also be subject to stricter regulations on technical and functional characteristics of games and the technical condition of the equipment.
The new act will also stipulate that operators must have certification for each type of slot machine issued by an independent laboratory recognised in all EU countries. However, currently there is no such laboratory equipped to carry out these tests to international standards in Serbia.
The new rules are expected to take effect some time next year and Mirjana Acimovic, president of JAKTA, is confident that the new law will have a positive impact on a market that had "serious problems" even before the global economic downturn.
"This will hopefully make the Serbian gaming market more attractive to investors," she said in an interview with InterGaming. "The main goals of these changes are to expand the Serbian slot machine market to facilitate supervision, control and the protection of players and to change the structure of the gaming market by eliminating machines that do not meet international standards.
"We strive to keep the Serbian market from being flooded with old machines from eastern Europe and want to increase the number of new machines instead. Thus we want to create attractive market conditions for international producers of slot machines like Aristocrat and Novomatic.
"The Serbian gaming industry will become very attractive for investments after the implementation of the new gaming legislation. The main reason for such optimism is the fact that the Serbian Ministry of Finance and the Games of Chance Administration expressed strong commitment to implement the regulations."
