Macau’s gaming regulator has refused to shed light on the re-tendering of gaming licenses or the timeline for revealing key details, despite the deadline for any extension to the first concession expiry now being less than 12 months away.
Asked for insight into the re-tendering process with the gaming concession of SJM Holdings due to expire in March 2020, the Director of Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, Paulo Martins Chan, insisted on Tuesday that he could offer no new information on the government’s plans.
“You all seem quite concerned about this question but I can’t give any related news,” Chan told reporters during a conference session at MGS Summit on Tuesday. “Of course the SAR government will make a decision and the DICJ will also participate in this round.”
The government’s deflection of the issue comes despite leading Macau law firm MdME confirming to Inside Asian Gaming that a decision on SJM’s concession must by law be made no later than 31 October 2019.
Under Section 13 no.2 of the Macau Gaming Law, if a concession is awarded for less than the maximum 20 years authorized by the present law, the government may at any time and “up to six months prior to the end of the concession” authorize one or more extensions of the concession, as long as the total period does not exceed the maximum 20-year term.
With SJM’s concession contract running for a period of 18 years compared with the 20-year contracts issued to Galaxy Entertainment Group and Wynn Macau, the law provides the government the right to extend SJM’s gaming concession one or more times for up to two years at a time provided the extension is granted by October 2019. SJM’s concession contract expires on 31 March 2020.
The same conditions apply to MGM China, which holds a sub-concession to SJM’s gaming license.
“I believe it is likely the government will grant the two-year extension to both SJM and MGM to bring the term of their respective Concession Contracts up to par with the terms of the remaining concession contracts,” MdME’s Carlos Eduardo Coelho told IAG in reference to the concessions held by Galaxy, Wynn and their sub-concessions Sands China and Melco Resorts, all of which expire in 2022.
“This also means that, as to the timing for granting an extension to SJM concession contract, the government shall issue such decision six months before the lapse of the SJM contract on 31 March 2020. The decision to grant the extension shall thus be made before October 2019.”
However “at this stage there are no clear indications if the decision will be made sooner rather than later.”
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