Japan’s Osaka prefecture has pushed back the end of its request-for-proposal (RFP) process, an important phase in its effort to win the right to host one of the country’s first casino resorts, by three months.
News emerged this past Friday that the prefecture will now close the RFP process in July instead of April, as the original plan was.
In a Friday announcement, Osaka officials said that they will now reveal their preferred private sector partner at some point September. That decision was previously planned to be made by mid-2020.
The RFP process is an important task Japanese cities and prefectures that want to take part in the race for hosting one of the country’s first integrated resorts with dedicated casino spaces need to complete. Through that process, they should pick a private sector partner to jointly bid with for one of the three gaming licenses the central government plans to award.
Despite the recent change in Osaka’s RFP timetable, the prefecture, along with its preferred partner, will still be able to participate in the application process next year. The Japanese government previously said that it would be accepting applications from interested prefectures and cities and their private sector partners between January and July 2021.
New Timetable for Resort Opening
Osaka previously targeted 2025 opening of its integrated resort, in case it won the right to host one. It now seems that prefecture officials have finally realized that that initial target was a bit too ambitious.
The City of Osaka was selected to host World Expo 2025. The event will take place from April 13 through October 13, 2025. It is set to take place on the artificial Yumeshima island in Osaka Bay. The same island is earmarked by city and prefecture officials as the site for the integrated resort.
Officials hoped that by introducing integrated resort experience in 2025, the complex, with its many facilities, would take advantage of the increased number of international visitors that would fly to Japan for World Expo.
The new deadline for the opening of an integrated resort with a casino is March 31, 2027, the end of Japan’s 2026 financial year.
It emerged in February that a consortium formed by Las Vegas casino giant MGM Resorts International and Japanese financial services company Orix Corp. was the only qualified applicant to participate in Osaka’s RFP process.
Macau-based Galaxy Entertainment Group and Genting Singapore, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Genting Group, said last fall that they were interested in bidding for the right to run an integrated resort in Osaka, but later on abandoned those plans.
While prefecture officials did not provide information on why they have decided to push the end of the RFP process to a later date, their decision probably is related to the dangerous coronavirus that has been sweeping the world and affecting every contour of society and global economy.
Source: Osaka puts back RFP deadline by three months
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on the day’s top casino news stories
Related News
source https://casinonewsblogger.com/osaka-casino-rfp-process-now-running-through-july/
No comments:
Post a Comment