Macau SAR GDP should witness growth between 8.3 and 21.0 percent in 2024, with the city’s authorities total revenue, mostly derived from gaming taxes, reaching as much as MOP109.6 billion ($13.6 billion), an economic forecast published by the University of Macau predicts.
The 2024 macroeconomic forecast considered two possible scenarios, a more optimistic one where mainland visitor arrivals next year will return to the level of 2019; and a more conservative one where the mainland visitor arrivals in 2024 will increase by 5 percent over 2023.
Almost 40 million visitors were reported in the SAR in 2019, with that number expected to reach some 27 million in 2023.
Based on these two scenarios, the research team made baseline forecasts for GDP growth of 21.0 percent reaching MOP422.2 billion ($52.4 billion) and 8.3 percent, reaching MOP377.6 billion ($46.9 billion), or 96 and 85.9 percent of 2019 results, respectively.
The UM projected that the Macau SAR Government’s recurring revenue would reach MOP109.6 billion ($13.6 billion) and MOP95.3 billion ($11.8 billion) for both scenarios, respectively.
The Macau government collected gaming taxes totalling MOP51.6 billion ($6.5 billion) in the first ten months of the year, according to details published by the SAR’s Financial Services Bureau.
This figure represents a 216 percent increase over the MOP16.3 billion ($2 billion) collected from January to October 2022.
Mainland visitor arrivals reached 15.32 million between January and October 2023, representing 64.4 percent of the same period in 2019. However, the recovery of visitor arrivals from other regions was slower, with 1.42 million arrivals between January and October 2023, only 40.7 percent of the same period in 2019.
The city’s authorities have made increasing the number of overseas visitors one of the goals of its economic diversification efforts.
‘The research team expects that Macau will face uncertainties about the economic development in mainland China in 2024: the contraction of the real estate market, as well as local government and corporate debt will affect residents’ income, leading to a decrease in their interest and purchasing power in travelling to Macau,’ the report added.
