Public expenditure continues to rise in Macau and revenue to fall, indicate the latest data released today by the Territory’s Directorate of Finance Services.
Between January and November, current revenue was 34.1 billion patacas (3.9 billion euros), against 47.2 billion patacas (5.5 billion euros) in 2021, a year economic crisis that also strongly affected the gaming capital of the world due to the covid-19 pandemic.
From this current revenue, the Government collected about 17.8 billion patacas (about two billion euros) in taxes on gambling, according to the latest budget execution report. That is, 43% less compared to the previous year (31.2 billion patacas, or 3.6 billion euros).
In the first 11 months of the year, Macau collected 67.6% of projected revenue for this year.
If revenue fell, public spending rose: this year, expenditure up to November was 87.4 billion patacas (10.2 billion euros), against 75.3 billion patacas (8.8 billion euros) in the previous year, with current expenditure also increasing from 64.1 billion patacas (7.4 billion euros) in 2021 to 74.6 billion patacas (8.7 billion euros) this year.
Since the end of January 2020, the pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on gambling, the engine of Macau’s economy, with taxes on revenues from this industry funding the overwhelming majority of the government budget.
Since then, the Macao Government’s budgets have been marked by successive changes and stimulus packages aimed at small and medium-sized companies, the population in general and consumption.
*With Lusa
