The Macau government will address a budget shortfall by drawing from its financial reserve fund. The impact of the coronavirus and intermittently closed borders has caused a drop of gaming taxes; officials will pull MOP6.34 billion (US$790.3 million) from the reserve to balance its books.
The government said the move will “maintain the financial balance of the Macao SAR budget and compensate for the reduction in revenue” from the casino industry.
Gross gaming revenues (GGR) for the first 10 months of 2021 was almost MOP72.15 billion, up 57.3 percent from the prior-year period but still short of government estimates. According to GGRAsia, government officials originally forecast 2021 casino GGR of MOP130 billion. Then, in August and September, the city was new Covid cases; the late September surge threw a wrench into October’s Golden Week holiday, typically one of the city’s strongest tourism periods.
Visitor volume fell 43.6 percent year-on-year and 47.8 percent in October due to tighter border measures between Macau and Zhuhai through the holiday week, which celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China. According to the Statistics and Census Service, the low monthly figure compared with 582,000 arrivals in October 2020 and was 89.8 percent lower than the 3.2 million visitors who arrived in October 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
