GGRAsia – Macau 1Q GDP rises 26pct y-o-y as gaming exports jump

Macau 1Q GDP rises 26pct y-o-y as gaming exports jump

May 24, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 25.7 percent year-on-year in real terms in the first three months this year, show government data issued on Friday.

The yearly gain was due to “the revival of the local economy underpinned by thriving exports of services as well as steady private consumption and gross fixed capital formation,” said the Statistics and Census Service.

Exports of gaming services and other tourism services rose by 62.7 percent and 14.8 percent respectively, showed the data.

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, where most of customers are either from mainland China or Hong Kong.

In the first quarter, Macau gross gaming revenue (GGR) from games of fortune rose 65.5 percent year-on-year, to just under MOP57.33 billion.

The statistics service noted in its Friday update, referring to a comparison with the trading year immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic: “The local economy has recovered to 87.2 percent of its size in the same quarter of 2019.”

Macau’s first-quarter GDP at current prices however fell 2.7 percent quarter-on-quarter, according to Friday’s data.

The city’s first-quarter GDP at current prices was MOP104.8 billion (US$13.03 billion), compared to MOP107.7 billion in current-prices terms in the fourth quarter last year.

The Statistics and Census Service noted in a Friday press release: “The implicit deflator of GDP, which measures the overall changes in prices, went up by 2.3 percent year-on-year,” to a reading of “106.8”.

For full-year 2023, Macau’s GDP surged by 80.5 percent year-on-year in real terms. On a current-prices basis, the city’s GDP stood at MOP379.5 billion in 2023, compared to MOP197.3 billion in the prior year.