The government has hit its 2023 gaming tax target early, having collected 51.5 billion patacas from Macao’s six gaming concessionaires by the end of October.
It had forecast gaming tax revenue of 50.8 billion patacas for the year – a touch over half of all tax takings it expected to rake across 2023, according to figures from the Financial Bureau cited by TDM.
Just over $5.08 billion patacas were collected in the month of October – down almost 24 percent month on month because the figure is derived from gross gaming revenues (GGR) collected in September, when severe weather and seasonality affected casino takings.
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Total tax revenues for the first ten months of 2023 were meanwhile at 76.1 billion patacas, while GGR for the same period stood at a cumulative 148.4 billion patacas
Meanwhile, total expenditure for the period came to 68.5 billion patacas, making for a positive balance of 7.64 billion.
The government recently forecast a surplus of 1.17 billion patacas for 2024.