The Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (CRGL) has repeatedly proven its efficiency from its early days. Despite the criticism by gambling legalization opponents and illegal market lobbyists, CRGL fulfils its tasks in terms of market regulatory control and budget indicators. In 2022, even the war failed to prevent the Commission from achieving its goals.
A full-scale war could not but affect the gambling market. Like all other economy sectors, legal gambling has suffered significant losses. However, the market has shown high adaptability to challenges and resilience that helps the majority of legal gambling operators survive this rough year. For its part, CRGL created the relevant regulatory environment by proposing initiatives to facilitate legal gambling operations.
Licensed gambling deserves credit for not only worrying about saving their business but paying license fees and helping the State and the AFU as part of their volunteer projects. The synergy between the business and the State helped us do what seemed impossible at the beginning of the year, that is, meet budget expectations.
In the 2022 state budget, CRGL received almost UAH 107.2 million. Actual operating expenses were even lower. As a result, the budget received almost 94% more money than was spent on the Commission.
These figures speak best about the efficiency of CRGL as a state regulator and the relevance of legalizing gambling in general. It is a great result since, even before the war, very few state bodies could boast of such efficiency.
In 2023, the state budget plans to receive UAH 1.596 billion in revenue from license fees and allocate UAH 86.8 billion for the operation of the Commission, which is 20% less than in 2022. The efficiency demonstrated by CRGL in previous years and the adaptability experienced by legal gambling leave little doubt that the budget targets will be met. However, anything can happen since we are still actively fighting against the rashists.
In addition to providing funds to the state budget, the Commission continues its fight on the legislative front. In particular, it is taking relevant steps to introduce the State Online Monitoring System (DSOM) and adopt draft law 2713-d. If the introduction of these legislative initiatives depended only on CRGL, it would have been done long ago, I am sure of it. However, unfortunately, we still need to overcome political apathy and sometimes even sabotage of these crucial issues by some government officials.
In 2022, carrying out activities amid a full-blown war, CRGL finally proved its effectiveness and further weakened the position of its critics. I believe this year, the Commission will be no less effective, and the legal gambling market will finally witness the adoption of important legislative initiatives facilitating its development.
Anton Kuchukhidze, Chairman of the Ukrainian Gambling Council, exclusively for the Ukrainian News
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