A total of 38 percent of major Japanese corporations replying to a survey on the outlook for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s economic policies, answered ‘Don’t know’ when asked whether the MGM Osaka casino resort would bring benefits to the economy.
Nonetheless, 59 percent of respondents said they had “expectations” regarding “bay area redevelopment” in Osaka, the locality of MGM Osaka, due to open in 2030.
The results of the poll were outlined on Tuesday in the Sankei Shimbun newspaper. The news outlet had sent out the survey between late November and mid-December, and 109 corporations had responded to it.
MGM Osaka is a JPY1.5-trillion (US$9.66-billion currently) project being developed by United States-based MGM Resorts International, Japan’s Orix Corp, and a number of other domestic investors. MGM Resorts is the parent of Macau casino operator MGM China Holdings Ltd.
More details on MGM Osaka’s architectural plans were released recently.
Sankei Shimbun gave its own explanation on why 38 percent of poll responses weren’t clear on the Osaka IR’s potential.
The news outlet stated: “This is a business model that has never been seen before in Japan, and a certain percentage of companies seem to find it difficult to evaluate.”
The newspaper asserted that while the integrated resort (IR) plans “include hotels, MICE [meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions], entertainment facilities, etc,” MGM Osaka’s business structure “relies on a casino for about 80 percent of its revenues, which may make evaluation even more difficult” in terms of eventual consumer demand.
In a separate Tuesday story on the Sankei Shimbun’s poll, the news outlet stated that “over 60 percent of major companies” approved of the Takaichi administration’s economic policies, “with high praise for economic and security measures, and calls for social security reform”.
AloJapan.com