An academic has issued a warning after the recent announcement by Las Vegas Sands that it plans to build casinos in Vietnam.

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Dr. Vu Dinh Anh warned about casino boom in the country like golf courses and universities.

Sheldon Adelson, Chairman of Las Vegas Sands, said the group would invest billions of USD in building resort-entertainment complexes in Hanoi and HCM City.

However, the chairman said, “We’ll not set up a casino in a place where local people can’t have access to that facility”. According to him, the complexes will contain a 1,800 room hotel, with additional areas for museums, conference halls and an entertainment centre. The casinos would account for only 2%-4% of the projects’ area.

Each complex is expected to create jobs for between 12,000 and 14,000 local people.

Economist Vu Dinh Anh said Vietnam should foster casino development and consider it as just another form of entertainment industry. “It would be a good idea to build a casino as part of a comprehensive resort-entertainment complex,” Anh shared.

Currently, many Vietnamese well-to-do people travel to Hong Kong, Macau, Cambodia, and Singapore to splurge their money on gambling at luxury casinos.

“Our country should develop casinos in order to attract more tourists and multiply state budget if we can properly manage them,” he emphasised.

In order to ensure safety at these institutions, Vietnam should follow the US management models.

He, however, warned that due attention should be paid to the projects in a bid to prevent the uncontrollable development that has plagued golf courses and universities.

Even though the investor said casinos would occupy just 2%-4% of the complex areas, they would likely change their plans to expand the facilities, challenging Vietnamese authorities.

Until now, despite the Government turning down over 70 golf course projects nationwide, the country still has 90 golf courses, two third of which are really being used as a tool to trade in real estate based on agricultural land.

The same situation has happened with colleges and universities. Due to lax management, the number of universities and colleges has mounted to around 450 in Vietnam.

The consequence is that many of these schools have failed to enroll students or accept those who the necessary examination marks of six or seven for three subjects.

In order to deal with the problems, the Ministry of Education and Training has requested a moratorium on new universities and colleges in order to scrutinise the quality of education offered at current institutions.