The tourist board would issue the request as early as the end of this month, it said in an email. The request may set out guidelines on how much space should be provided for gaming, convention centres, hotel rooms, museums and other features of the two projects, on Sentosa Island and at Marina Bay.

Tabcorp and Publishing & Broadcasting are in the final running, but neither is on particularly strong odds to win the jackpot due to the strong field of international players that includes Harrah's Entertainment, MGM Mirage and Kerzner International.

PBL is partnering Stanley Ho's Melco International, but Tabcorp has yet to announce a partner that will help defray the huge upfront costs should it win its bid for one of the two sites.

Each set of proposals is estimated to cost millions of dollars and take months to develop. The process is expected to flush out the pretenders among the high-rollers bidding for the projects.

The projects' final costs will run into billions. Due to the lateness of the request for bids, the winners for the developments are not expected to be announced until early next year.

The casino operators are seeking to tap into a market that's within a six-hour flight of 2.5 billion people in Asia and to replicate the success of new casinos being built in the Chinese city of Macau.

"Asia, economically, is offering amazing opportunities for growth in terms of disposable income and new customers," said Sean Monaghan, an analyst at Merrill Lynch in Singapore.

"Companies that don't have exposure to Macau are going to be very interested in Singapore. It will be the largest, the most skilled, best capitalised casino companies which will likely be awarded the licence."

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who took office in August last year, lifted a four-decade ban on casinos to add "buzz" to the city-state after its share of Asia's tourism fell.

"It's a change of generation," said Hugh Young, managing director for Aberdeen Asset Management.

"The older generation here said 'over my dead body' - now it's coming in with the young generation."

Merrill Lynch estimates the casino operators will invest $US5 billion (A$6.5 billion) in the two sites.

The Singaporean Government received 19 proposals when it first sought expressions of interest from developers and casino operators, and 14 were placed on a shortlist. Two bidders subsequently dropped out.

Among companies that expressed interest, Harrah's hired Daniel Libeskind, master planner of the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in New York City, as the architect for one of its Singapore proposals. Kerzner, operator of the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, has promised an "iconic" design, while Las Vegas Sands, the world's biggest casino-hotel operator by value, said it would build an 832-room hotel, a convention centre and an arena if it won the right to operate a casino in the city-state.

The two casino resorts "would invigorate the market," said Robert Hecker, managing director at Horwath Asia Pacific, a hotel consulting company. "You're adding a huge demand-generator to generate new business for Singapore."

Bloomberg

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