Mauritius budget scraps hotel casino licences and expands casino tax monitoring

Mauritius is using its 2026/27 budget to redraw the gambling map: hotel casino licences are being scrapped, the digital games regime is being widened, and casinos plus Gaming Houses are being pulled into the Mauritius Revenue Authority’s Central Electronic Monitoring System (CEMS). For PSPs and operators, the practical point is simple enough: fewer special regimes, more state visibility, and tighter reporting hooks.

1. The hotel casino category is being repealed altogether. Under Section 44 of the budget annex, the definitions of “hotel casino”, “hotel casino games”, “hotel casino gaming machine” and “hotel casino operator” are to be deleted “as these will no longer be authorised activities”, and the provisions governing their licensing and operation will go with them.
2. The bespoke regime that let a hotel operate a casino under a dedicated hotel casino licence is disappearing. In future, hotel-based casino operations will need an ordinary casino licence, where that is permitted under the revised framework.
3. Mauritius is also extending its digital games regime, which was introduced in 2025, to limited payout machine operators. That widens the number of gambling businesses that fall under the same regulatory umbrella instead of keeping them in separate buckets.
4. All betting terminals must be registered with the Director General of the Mauritius Revenue Authority and connected to CEMS. The 2026/27 measures extend that same requirement to casinos and Gaming Houses, which means the tax authority’s monitoring net now reaches deeper onto the gaming floor.
5. The government says the reforms follow earlier efforts to restore confidence in the Gambling Regulatory Authority. On 4 July 2025, Prime Minister and Finance Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam told MPs the government had “undertaken to restore public confidence in the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA), particularly in regard to its oversight of the horse racing industry”, and would ensure “the GRA operates as a trustworthy regulator of the gaming and betting industry”.

This is one of the biggest structural changes to Mauritius’ gambling framework since the Gambling Regulatory Authority Act was consolidated in 2007. The full parliamentary debate on the 2026/27 reforms will begin once the Finance Bill is introduced in the National Assembly, after Cabinet on 3 July 2026 said an economic committee chaired by the prime minister would finalise the legislation, with its first meeting on 8 July.