GGRAsia – Gaming exports help Macau GDP grow by 18pct in 2021

Gaming exports help Macau GDP grow by 18pct in 2021

Mar 04, 2022 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 18.0 percent year-on-year in real terms in full-year 2021, according to data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The city’s GDP for the whole of 2020 had contracted by 54.0 percent year-on-year in real terms.

The figures published on Friday showed that exports of services in 2021 rose by 62.1 percent year-on-year. Of that, exports of gaming services and other tourism services jumped by 45.0 percent and 127.2 percent year-on-year respectively.

Gaming services in Macau are included in exports when calculating the city’s GDP. That is in order to reflect spending by tourists in the city’s casinos.

Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue grew 43.7 percent year-on-year in full-year 2021, despite a number of disruptions to tourism business in the second half of the year, due to community cases of Covid-19.

In Friday’s release, the statistics bureau said the pandemic situation “remained volatile” in 2021, but that it had “improved compared to 2020,” with a “pickup in total demand” helping the economy rebound.

It added: “Domestic demand rose by 3.0 percent year-on-year. Local economic activities of Macau residents have basically recovered, with private consumption expenditure expanding by 7.0 percent year-on-year.”

The Macau economy however contracted by 4.4 percent year-on-year in real terms in the final quarter of 2021, showed the data. Exports of services in fourth-quarter 2021 edged down by 0.3 percent year-on-year, of which exports of gaming services fell by 14.4 percent, while exports of other tourism services rose by 8.9 percent.