While Macau’s revenue-starved casinos continue to wait for China to issue tourist visas again, the market suffered its fourth straight month of year-on-year gambling declines in excess of 90 percent.
Data released by the government’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau show July win totaled MOP1.34 billion (US$168 million), down 94.5 percent from July 2019.
It was pretty much what analysts were expecting𑁋the median estimated was for minus-95 percent𑁋and was a slight improvement over June, which saw a record 97 percent drop.
No one expects meaningful improvement either until the central government restores the Individual Visit Scheme.
Instituted in 2003 to help Macau and Hong Kong recover from the SARS epidemic, the IVS allows mainland residents to make repeated visits to the two cities annually for up to seven days at a stretch. Last year, it generated nearly half of all visits to Macau and was the principal money-maker for the casinos because it permits personal travel independent of tour groups and therefore tends to attract wealthier tourists. The IVS was available in 49 cities before it was suspended in January as part of efforts on both sides of the border to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
There has been no word to date about when the program will resume, only that its “resumption will be announced in due course,” as Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance Lei Wai Nong said recently.
“We must maintain our preventive work on controlling the pandemic, and we will evaluate the risk to push the interactions between (Macau and China).”
More encouraging signs are emerging, however.
Last month, the neighboring mainland province of Guangdong, the largest source of visitors to Macau, lifted mandatory quarantines for travelers returning from the city.
More recently, the central government has announced that visas for non-tourist travel𑁋that is, for family or business purposes𑁋will be resumed across all provinces on August 12.
