Macau GDP slumps 20 pct in 2015 on gaming slowdown

Mar 03, 2016 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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Macau’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 20.3 percent year-on-year in real terms in 2015, said the city’s Statistics and Census Service on Thursday. The drop in GDP accelerated from the 0.9-percent year-on-year slump seen in 2014, as casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in the city continued to slide.

Macau’s accumulated GGR for the full year of 2015 fell 34.3 percent compared to 2014, according to data released by the city’s regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau. In 2014, GGR had fallen 2.6 percent.

“Owing to the continuous decline in exports of tourism and gaming services, GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015 contracted by 14.4 percent year-on-year in real terms, a notable deceleration from the 21.0 percent decline in the previous quarter,” the statistics bureau said in a release.

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

Last year, gaming service exports were directly responsible for 50 percent of Macau’s MOP368.7-billion (US$46.0 billion) GDP, a decline of 10 percentage points compared to 2014, according to figures from the statistics bureau.

In 2015, Macau’s GDP per capita was MOP574,790, a decrease of 22.8 percent in year-on-year terms.

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