Georgia considers banning online gambling

Republic of Georgia has announced its plans to ban online gambling as part of its new regulatory framework.

According to local news outlets, special commissions have been appointed to work on this issue at parliament. Moreover, the Ministry of Finance will shortly introduce new bills which would totally prohibit any form of online gaming.

However, these restrictive measures do not please every politician in the ruling party. Speaking to the local media, Deputy Finance Minister of Georgia Lasha Khutsishvili assured these ban wouldn’t be beneficial as international cases show that banning online modalities is not always effective.

“We analyse the world experience to understand how effective those are or other measures taken with respect to online gaming. The international practice shows that at present there are no effective mechanisms to actually prohibit online games. Millions are spent from the state budget on such measures, but in vain.

“The Finance Ministry is also considering this issue from the point of view of fiscal policy, full control over the Internet is associated with very high costs,” he concluded.