Macau govt forecasts flat casino GGR in 2020: budget

Nov 13, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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The Macau government forecasts the city’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) to come in at about MOP260 billion (US$32.2 billion) in 2020, flat compared to the forecast for 2019.

That is based on a forecast that direct taxable income from gaming will be MOP91.0 billion, according to the government’s 2020 budget plan announced on Tuesday. That is the same figure as estimated by the government for the whole of 2019.

The government taxes the GGR of Macau casinos at a rate of 35 percent, but other levies on casino gaming raise the tax rate to 39 percent, in effect.

The local authorities are usually conservative in their annual forecasts on direct taxable income from gaming, typically underestimating the eventual tallies by a wide margin.

The aggregate of Macau casino GGR for the 10 months to October 31 stood at MOP246.74 billion, a contraction of 1.8 percent year-on-year, according to official data.

Macau’s accumulated casino GGR for full-year 2018 stood at nearly MOP302.85 billion, a 14-percent increase compared to the tally of 2017, according to data published by the gaming bureau in January. It marked the second straight year of GGR growth, following an increase of 19.1 percent in full-year 2017. Before that, the Macau market had experienced three consecutive years of annual decline.

An analyst at Fitch Ratings Inc said recently that the ratings agency was forecasting “low single-digit growth” for the Macau casino industry in 2020.

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