The Macau government’s forecast MOP240 billion (US$29.9 billion) for 2025 casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) is “definitely achievable” and is a “conservative estimate”. So said the city’s current leader, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng (pictured) in a Tuesday press conference.
The 2025 budget plan had been outlined to the city’s Legislative Assembly, shortly before the media briefing. Mr Ho told legislators that the 2025 budget outline had been agreed with his successor Sam Hou Fai, formerly the city’s most senior judge, who is due to take over as the city’s leader next month.
Mr Ho had also on Tuesday given legislators a report on the government’s work for the current year.
Mr Ho told the subsequent press conference that to reach circa MOP220 billion in GGR for 2024 was within expectations, adding: “The forecast we made for next year is not such a big increase… MOP240 billion [in 2025 GGR] is definitely achievable…it is a conservative estimate.”
He noted the 2024 GGR forecast had been MOP216 billion, or MOP18 billion a month.
The Chief Executive stated: “We see that by October [end] casino GGR is around MOP190 billion,” year-to-date, or MOP19 billion a month. At that pace, “we may achieve MOP228 billion in the full year [2024],” said Mr Ho.
He also spoke about the weighting of gaming receipts as a component of the local economy.
“In 2023, gaming receipts…accounted for 37.2 percent of Macau’s GDP [gross domestic product]. This year, I expect that this percentage could go up to around 40 percent,” he observed.
Mr Ho also mentioned the so-called “1+4” strategy for the city’s economic diversification – a policy promoted by the central government. It signifies gaming and leisure tourism, plus four sectors deemed nascent: healthcare, financial services, advanced technology and the staging of events.
The aim was for gaming to “maintain a 40-percent weighting of our GDP,” said the city’s leader, adding, the aim was “not to ‘compress’ this industry, but… grow the [economic] pie… with the other four industries contributing the rest”.
The Chief Executive also said during the press conference that his administration was “thankful” for the six casino operators’ willingness to pledge billions of patacas for non-gaming activities, including not only the hosting of things such as concerts at their resorts, but also community work such as revitalisation projects in the city’s old neighbourhoods.
Public policy milestones
Some of that effort – and money for it – had been pledged by the industry as part of the new 10-year concessions granted to the six operators and that started in January 2023.
Mr Ho noted that another task for the current year had been to boost public oversight of the casino sector, and this had been achieved.
He had earlier told the assembly: “The amended ‘Measures on Responsible Gambling’ have been completed and promulgated. The ‘Law to Combat Crimes of Illegal Gambling’ has also gone through its final reading by the Legislative Assembly” and had been gazetted.
The Chief Executive added: “The formulating of Law No.7/2024 – Legal regime of credit concession for games of chance in casinos – has been completed. This is work that continuously improves the oversight and regulation of the gaming industry.”
Such work helped maintain the “healthy” and “orderly” development of the local gaming industry, with what he termed an enhanced regulatory framework that combatted online gaming, gambling-related illicit foreign currency exchange, money laundering and illicit capital flow.
Mr Ho had reminded legislators that three years of his five-year administration – that started in December 2019, and ends next month – had been spent dealing with the “unprecedented” challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He is the first city leader since the handover from Portuguese administration to that of China in 1999 to complete only a single five-year term. In August he said he would not seek a second term, for health reasons.
