Macau’s Monetary Authority plans to study the feasibility of launching a securities market, including a stock market, to help shift the territory’s economy away from its near total dependence on gaming.
The stock market, which would be yuan-based, could also serve to weave the territory more tightly into Beijing’s long-range plans for cooperative development of the greater south China region, officials say.
It would “leverage Macau’s advantage to serve the country’s need,” compared with established trading centers in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the Monetary Authority told Reuters.
The transformation over the last two decades of what was once a moribund colony of Portugal into the largest casino revenue market in the world has presented local authorities with a dilemma: how to wean itself away from a gaming industry that is by far and away its dominant industry𑁋one that took US$38 billion from gamblers last year, most of them from mainland China𑁋and whose taxes constitute more than 80 percent of government revenues.
Beijing is pushing local authorities to do more to develop the city as an international tourism destination, as well as a platform for trade and business between the Portuguese-speaking countries and China, in line with its growth plans for the Greater Bay Area, as its regional development initiative is called.
Macau has started to develop financial leasing, wealth management and yuan clearing, but services and volumes pale in comparison with neighboring Hong Kong.
To spur this process, the Chinese government last year approved the establishment of the Chongwa (Macau) Financial Asset Exchange to facilitate bond trading. There have been three bond issuances listed so far.
