Cleav­on Raphael

Lo­cal horse rac­ing is in its death throes, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the T&T Book­mak­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Pe­ter George.Blam­ing the Gov­ern­ment for the im­po­si­tion of a ten per cent turnover tax on every punter plac­ing a bet, George said many pun­ters have gone un­der­ground to place il­le­gal bets be­cause of the dis­put­ed tax.In­ter­est­ing­ly, he is sug­gest­ing that the Bet­ting Levy Board in­ves­ti­gate and restart con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial and scrapped Ca­roni Rac­ing Com­plex to en­sure the sur­vival of the in­dus­try.

Q: Mr George, am I cor­rect in say­ing the lo­cal horse rac­ing in­dus­try in T&T is un­der­go­ing se­ri­ous stress?

A: (At his Ari­api­ta Av­enue of­fice, with an em­phat­ic re­sponse) Yes. That is cor­rect. The vol­ume of bet­ting–par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pri­vate bet­ting shops bet­ter known as bet­ting pools–has dropped be­tween 33 and 45 per cent over the last three years.

What's main­ly re­spon­si­ble for this state of af­fairs?

Well, the rea­son for that is over the years the peo­ple who used to bet on horse rac­ing have now mi­grat­ed to bet­ting on oth­er sports and all ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing soc­cer, foot­ball, what­ev­er. In so do­ing, the lev­el of horse rac­ing has start­ed to de­cline but more im­por­tant, the re­al im­pact on the drop of bet­ting on horse rac­ing is the ex­is­tence of the Gov­ern­ment's ten per cent turnover tax which the punter has to pay since the Bet­ting Levy Board was en­act­ed about 15 years ago.

If my mem­o­ry serves me right, didn't I in­ter­view you around that same time where you had ex­pressed a sim­i­lar fear about the death of this sport be­cause of that same tax is­sue?

That is cor­rect, and that has al­ways been a fear. We have made all sorts of rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the BLB (Bet­ting Levy Board) and to the Gov­ern­ment about the re­moval of the tax be­cause it is im­pact­ing neg­a­tive­ly on the peo­ple who are bet­ting.Pun­ters are not de­sirous of pay­ing that tax each time they place a bet, and they have gone over to bet­ting il­le­gal­ly with un­der­ground book­mak­ers (book­mak­er, book­ie or turf ac­coun­tant is an or­gan­i­sa­tion or a per­son that takes bets on sport­ing and oth­er events at agreed up­on odds).

Il­le­gal­ly?

Yes. Be­cause the un­der­ground book­mak­ers do not charge any tax. So here's a man who wants to bet $100 and who doesn't want to spend $110. And that is get­ting worse. This form of bet­ting is in­creas­ing sub­stan­tial­ly in T&T and there are un­der­ground book­mak­ers even in your own bet­ting shops so­lic­it­ing­pun­ters to bet with them.

So it is a se­ri­ous prob­lem be­cause our vol­ume of bet­ting is drop­ping and ex­pens­es re­main or are get­ting high­er. It is not eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able, hence the rea­son why so many bet­ting shops have shut down.

What has been the re­sponse by the board to your (pro­pri­etors of pri­vate bet­ting shops) plight?

We have com­plained to the BLB say­ing, "Look, let's get to­geth­er and get a for­mu­la for a sim­ple flat tax paid year­ly in­stead of this bur­den­some ten per cent on every bet placed. In that way, we would be able to mit­i­gate the un­der­ground bet­ting and to a cer­tain ex­tent be able to stream­line our busi­ness, and the board can bud­get them­selves on the ba­sis of know­ing ex­act­ly how much tax would be col­lect­ed each year. In a way, they like the sug­ges­tion. But the fig­ure they want to charge the bet­ting shops is to­tal­ly un­re­al­is­tic.

How much are they ask­ing for?

They are ask­ing dou­ble for what we are rec­om­mend­ing–we rec­om­mend­ed $2 mil­lion per year, per pool, as the flat tax. The BLB is say­ing that is too small, and they want a to­tal of $35 to $40 mil­lion a year. Now that can­not work.

In terms of em­ploy­ment and gen­er­at­ing rev­enue how are the pools fear­ing?

Many bet­ting shops have closed. Right now we have on­ly 11, and more may close down. I can as­sure you peo­ple have lost their jobs and right now, with 11 shops, the board does not re­alise the sever­i­ty of the prob­lem.The shops em­ploy 750 peo­ple and in­di­rect­ly an­oth­er 250.

Couldn't it be ar­gued that if the shops where shut down, it would be no big thing if that hap­pens...

Right now these bet­ting shops are the bread bas­ket that is keep­ing lo­cal horse rac­ing alive. We con­tribute be­tween $16 and $18 mil­lion per an­num and that mon­ey is used to sus­tain the in­dus­try. If they don't have tax that is be­ing paid by us, there is no doubt the Ari­ma Race Club would be forced to close down them­selves. That is how se­ri­ous it is.

Do you think the board is act­ing on their own or they have to wait on the Gov­ern­ment be­fore act­ing?

No. Based on their terms of ref­er­ence they can act on their own. If there is any­thing over and above their lim­it they will have to get Gov­ern­ment ap­proval. But so far, they have been act­ing on their own.

Is the board try­ing to run you all out of busi­ness?

No. I don't think it is de­lib­er­ate. I think they do not know what they are do­ing. They are un­aware of the prob­lems in this in­dus­try.

Are the book­mak­ers rep­re­sent­ed on the BLB?

Again, the leg­is­la­tion re­quires a mem­ber of the T&T Book­mak­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to sit on the board. I, Pe­ter George, as pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion sat on the board for ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine years. Last year, I re­signed be­cause in my opin­ion, sit­ting on the BLB was a waste of time. The as­so­ci­a­tion is not rep­re­sent­ed.I wrote to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and I think I copied the line min­is­ter who is the Ho­n­ourable Vas­ant Bharath, that we are not in­ter­est­ed in sit­ting on the board.

Ac­tu­al­ly, Min­is­ter Bharath had many meet­ings with us and he is re­al­ly try­ing to be help­ful, but it is a kind of del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion in terms of the agree­ment be­tween the board and the bet­ting shops. So he is be­tween the dev­il and the deep blue sea. I must com­mend the min­is­ter for try­ing, but no im­prove­ment has been found.

Mr George, how long can the 11 sur­viv­ing shops con­tin­ue to car­ry on in this present sce­nario be­fore the death of the in­dus­try, as you would say?

Well, Clevon, un­less the law is changed, the demise of the pri­vate bet­ting shops may go first. I would say in two, three to four years from now, there would be no pri­vate bet­ting shops if the ex­ist­ing law re­mains.Where­as, if the law changes to al­low for a sim­ple rea­son­able one flat an­nu­al tax, hope­ful­ly the pri­vate bet­ting shops may sur­vive. If not, lo­cal rac­ing would not sur­vive be­cause they would have to close un­less the Gov­ern­ment sup­ply them with a lot of mon­ey. And, Clevon, this law it­self is bad law.

Mean­ing?

There is no ten per cent turnover tax nowhere in the world, ex­cept maybe one coun­try which I can­not re­mem­ber at this time. What the board wants to do is to place com­put­ers in all the pri­vate bet­ting shops so that they can quan­ti­fy ex­act­ly how much mon­ey is tak­en by every pool and how much tax they were sup­posed to pay.

They want to bring in com­put­ers from a state en­ter­prise to put in pri­vate busi­ness. That is to­tal­ly un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, but they say they could do it and I think they are pro­ceed­ing with it, but it is not go­ing to be that easy as we are go­ing to take ac­tion against that.

Mr George, isn't there any way you all can make pri­vate bet­ting shops more at­trac­tive to bring back the pun­ters who have gone un­der­ground and who are now bet­ting on sports from for­eign places?

The on­ly an­swer is to drop the ten per cent tax...that is the on­ly way we can sur­vive, and we give pun­ters all the ben­e­fits they are ac­cus­tomed to.The BLB is of the opin­ion the pri­vate bet­ting shops are not pay­ing the right tax and that is ab­solute­ly in­cor­rect.

What about the Ari­ma Race Club?

Lo­cal rac­ing will die even if we con­tin­ue to pay the ten per cent tax, un­less they re­move from those fa­cil­i­ties in Ari­ma. It is derelict, the con­di­tions are ter­ri­ble in­clud­ing the pad­dock, the place hot and sweaty, and its cus­tomer ser­vice needs to be im­proved.

Of course there have been some im­prove­ments, but con­di­tions are not up to stan­dard.

So what is the an­swer?

I think that lo­cal horse rac­ing could be a very nice and suc­cess­ful in­dus­try but it is go­ing to fail in Ari­ma. What they need to do is make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the Gov­ern­ment to re­sus­ci­tate Ca­roni, which was the orig­i­nal plan for a cen­tral fa­cil­i­ty. A lot of the in­fra­struc­tur­al work is still there and in fair­ly good shape.

The ARC (Ari­ma Race Club) can sell its 70 acres of land to a pri­vate de­vel­op­er, use that mon­ey to con­tin­ue fin­ish­ing Ca­roni and any short­fall, the Gov­ern­ment can do a soft loan and build a nice fa­cil­i­ty down there at Ca­roni.That was a very bad mis­take that for­mer PM George Cham­bers made in stop­ping Ca­roni be­cause at that time we al­ready had $57 mil­lion in the ground. The Gov­ern­ment has a role to play in the sur­vival of horse rac­ing.