Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says moves to open up re­mote gam­bling be­tween peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go and over­seas have tremen­dous rev­enue-rais­ing po­ten­tial, while Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land has warned of ad­dic­tion and oth­er ill ef­fects on vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple and youths.

Tan­coo pi­lot­ed the res­o­lu­tion to pass the Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting) (Re­mote Gam­bling) Or­der 2026, in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

The bill is meant to pro­vide the nec­es­sary le­gal frame­work to per­mit a per­son to en­gage in re­mote gam­bling.

It was passed with unan­i­mous Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion votes.

Tan­coo not­ed that cur­rent law pro­hib­it­ed any­one op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go from of­fer­ing re­mote gam­bling to an­oth­er per­son in any oth­er coun­try, with fines rang­ing from $5 mil­lion and sev­en years’ im­pris­on­ment to $10 mil­lion and ten years’ im­pris­on­ment.

He said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment in 2021 ac­knowl­edged that the gam­bling sec­tor was a $16 bil­lion in­dus­try, but said it was char­ac­terised by po­ten­tial for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty.

Tan­coo said the PNM did not al­low re­mote gam­bling be­cause it felt T&T lacked the lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion and ca­pac­i­ty to mon­i­tor In­ter­net gam­bling gen­er­at­ed lo­cal­ly.

He said noth­ing was done to ad­dress the re­mote gam­bling pro­vi­sion, al­though the PNM ac­knowl­edged con­stant pol­i­cy re­view was re­quired, and T&T lost mil­lions in po­ten­tial rev­enue.

Con­firm­ing that the res­o­lu­tion is a rev­enue-rais­ing mea­sure, he added, “This is reg­u­la­tion of whole new in­dus­try; it’s an em­ploy­ment cre­ation mea­sure, in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment mea­sure, a for­eign ex­change gen­er­at­ing mea­sure.”

He said coun­tries have learnt that the more con­duct is pro­hib­it­ed, the more il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty is dri­ven to un­der­ground economies.

Cit­ing li­cens­ing, reg­u­lat­ing and mon­i­tor­ing it to make the in­dus­try work for the econ­o­my and coun­try, Tan­coo said that is the ra­tio­nale be­hind the res­o­lu­tion:

“We must act. This Gov­ern­ment is about cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and stim­u­lat­ing in­dus­try... we en­vis­age a lot of good can come out of this if done cor­rect­ly.”

Tan­coo gave cur­rent sta­tis­tics for the present gam­bling regime:

• 1,150 reg­is­tered gam­ing-re­lat­ed ac­counts, com­pris­ing 926 Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax ac­counts and 224 Club Gam­ing Tax ac­counts with the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

• Pay­ments re­ceived in 2025 – ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72.66 mil­lion, com­pris­ing $15.06 mil­lion in Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax and $57.60 mil­lion in Club Gam­ing Tax.

• Pay­ments for 2026 so far – ap­prox­i­mate­ly $71.32 mil­lion, com­pris­ing $21.23 mil­lion in Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax and $50.10 mil­lion in Club Gam­ing Tax.

• A co-or­di­nat­ed ex­er­cise con­duct­ed be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and Feb­ru­ary 2026 re­sult­ed in 247 pay­ments across 240 Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax ac­counts to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15.58 mil­lion.

Tan­coo added, “Fig­ures demon­strate that reg­u­lat­ed gam­ing al­ready pro­vides a mea­sur­able rev­enue stream and re­in­force the im­por­tance of bring­ing ad­di­tion­al gam­bling ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the for­mal sys­tem. The rev­enue im­pli­ca­tions to TT are very pos­i­tive as there’s the abil­i­ty to gain rev­enue on a glob­al scale if this re­mote gam­bling in­dus­try be­comes suc­cess­ful,”

On­line gam­bling dan­ger—PNM Scot­land

Scot­land said it was a PNM bill which the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress brought, though they hadn’t sup­port­ed this be­fore.

“But Gov­ern­ment is broke and needs every cent! You now try­ing to beef up rev­enue, the war’s over and we not too sure about ‘per­sona non gra­ta’.”

He said claus­es in the PNM’s pre­vi­ous bill were un­pro­claimed be­cause that Gov­ern­ment was cau­tious about the pit­falls of on­line gam­bling and so­ci­ety.

Scot­land said the PNM was cau­tious about the mat­ter since it un­der­stood Caribbean/T&T so­ci­ety and the dis­ad­van­tages of gam­bling, es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple and youths.

“We un­der­stand the pro­lif­er­a­tion of on­line gam­bling may have dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects on men­tal health is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly with this new gen­er­a­tion ... they’re not like us - they’re dif­fer­ent, even talk­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. This gen­er­a­tion needs a lit­tle more care in how we do busi­ness, try to re­move or reg­u­late their rights and how we open them!”