Macao saw a sharp rebound in foreign investment last year, with total inward direct investment rising 54.9 percent year-on-year to 13.76 billion patacas (US$1.72 billion), according to new figures released by the Statistics and Census Service (known by its Portuguese initials DSEC).
The surge, largely fuelled by reinvested profits, generated income of 53.92 billion patacas (US$6.74 billion) for the year, up 1.9 percent.
Most of that – 30.83 billion patacas (US$3.85 billion) – came from the gaming sector, while the financial services and retail sectors earned 8.17 billion (US$1.02 billion) and 7.95 billion patacas (US$0.99 billion) respectively.
The Chinese mainland and Hong Kong remained the city’s biggest investment sources in 2024, contributing 6.30 billion patacas (US$0.79 billion) and 6.18 billion patacas (US$0.77 billion) respectively. Investment from the Cayman Islands rebounded to 2.97 billion patacas (US$0.37 billion), after a year of negative inflows.
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By the end of 2024, the total stock of inward investment reached 395.36 billion patacas (US$49.41 billion), up 4.5 percent from 2023.
The total value of foreign investment in the gaming sector stood at 142.35 billion patacas (US$17.79 billion), representing 36 percent of all inward investment – a slight drop on the previous year. Financial services (143 billion patacas or US$17.87 billion) and real estate (23.96 billion patacas or US$2.99 billion) posted gains of 9.2 and 5.5 percent, respectively.
On the outbound side, Macao enterprises invested 3.74 billion patacas (US$0.47 billion) outside of the SAR in 2024, earning 1.11 billion patacas in returns. By year end, the stock of outward direct investments had expanded by 2 percent year-on-year to 110.02 billion patacas (US$13.75 billion).
Outward direct investment stock in the Chinese mainland rose by 0.5 percent year-on-year to 82.91 billion patacas (US$10.36 billion), with Guangdong cities taking up 83 percent of that. Hong Kong stocks grew by 14.4 percent year-on-year to 8.59 billion patacas (US$1.07 billion).
