Macau gaming tax collection plunges to US$3.7m

The city has revised its budget again with gaming tax collection down by 42 per cent since the last revision in April.

Macau.- The Legislative Assembly has approved a further revised 2020 budget as they expect final tax collection from gaming to be down by 42 per cent from the last estimate, which was revised in April.

The city expects to collect MOP29.46bn (under US$$3.70bn) from gaming taxes. In April, the city had predicted it would take MOP45.5bn (US$5.7bn).

Taxes on casino revenues are expected to amount to about MOP26.29bn (US$3.39bn) and taxes on junket operations MOP210m (US$26.3m).

During the first 10 months of 2020, Macau’s government collected MOP24.35 billion (US$3.04 billion) in gaming taxes, down 74 per cent year-on-year due to lack of international visitors and VIPs, mainly on account of pandemic restrictions.  

Director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, has said that total visitors this year will be less than 6 million, down from 39 million travellers in 2019.

Half of the year’s visitors were recorded in January before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the region.

Senna Fernandes said: “January was a very good month with 3 million visitors but the remaining 11 months didn’t even match that amount.

“Christmas and New Year is not traditionally a travelling period for mainland Chinese so we don’t anticipate a very high number of bookings. But we would hope that there will be more retail shopping.

“We are having the Macau Shopping Festival at the time and we hope this kind of activity can stimulate more spending in Macau and attract more visitors.”