Fewer visitors and the ravages of Covid-19 had a punishing effect on Macao’s casino’s last year, whose contribution to the local economy – calculated as Gross Value Added – fell by 79.6 per cent year-on-year to MOP 41.85 billion (US$5.22 billion).
According to the latest figure from the Statistics and Census Service, 2020 saw gross surplus of the sector decline by 87.9 per cent to MOP 22.13 billion (US$2.76 billion). Gross Surplus Ratio, a measure of how effectively receipts are converted into surplus, fell by 26.1 percentage points to 36.1 per cent.
Closed border closures and pandemic restrictions both impacted sharply on business the whole year. Total receipts of the gaming sector in 2020 fell by 78.4 per cent year-on-year to MOP 63.94 billion (US$7.98 billion), with receipts from gaming down 79.4 per cent to MOP 60.32 billion (US$7.53 billion) and rental by 29.1 per cent to MOP 38 million (US$4.7 million).
Total expenditure of the gaming sector fell 60.6 per cent to MOP 46.42 billion (US$5.79 billion), including an 83.3 per cent decline in expenditure on the purchase of goods, commission paid and customer rebates to MOP 9.43 billion (US$1.18 billion).
Operating expenses fell by 68.8 per cent to MOP 9.95 billion (US$1.24 billion), including a 74.5 per cent reduction in the amount spent on complementary goods and services provided to customers to MOP 4.64 billion (US$579 million).
Employees compensation fell by 12.5 per cent year-on-year to MOP 19.71 billion (US$2.46 billion) although its share of total expenditure expanded from 19.1 per cent in 2019 to 42.5 per cent in 2020.
Despite the sector seeing its value to the economy decline it was still the primary source of revenue for the government with MOP 29.81 billion (US$3.73 billion) in tax collected in 2020 – comprising more than 70 per cent of all tax revenue collected city-wide.
