The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its forecast for Macau’s economic growth in 2024 by 3.3 percentage points, according to its World Economic Outlook report published on Tuesday.
The institution now expects Macau’s gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 10.6 percent this year, down from a previous estimate of 13.9 percent made in May.
Regarding 2025, the IMF expects Macau’s economic growth to reach 7.3 percent, down from a previous estimate of 9.6 percent.
Macau’s GDP grew by 15.7 percent year-on-year in real terms in the first half of 2024, according to data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
In the second quarter of 2024, Macau’s GDP rose by 6.9 percent year-on-year in real terms, a slowdown from the 25.7-percent growth recorded in the preceding three months, showed official data.
When it announced in May its forecast for 2024, the IMF said Macau’s GDP growth would be “driven by further recovery in the gaming sector and pickup in private investment, partly due to commitments from gaming concessionaires to invest in non-gaming sectors”.
In the latest World Economic Outlook report, the IMF said global growth is “expected to remain stable yet underwhelming,” at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 2025.
It added: “While the global decline in inflation is a major milestone, downside risks are rising and now dominate the outlook: an escalation in regional conflicts, monetary policy remaining tight for too long, a possible resurgence of financial market volatility with adverse effects on sovereign debt markets … a deeper growth slowdown in China, and the continued ratcheting up of protectionist policies.”
The slowdown in China referred to the possibility that the mainland, the key tourism feeder market for Macau, could experience a “deeper- or longer-than-expected contraction” in its property sector, which “could weaken consumer sentiment and generate negative global spillovers given China’s large footprint in global trade”.
But the IMF said previously that the Macau policy on broadening the city’s economic activity and its appeal to the rest of the world, should “mitigate” some of the mainland-related risk.
