INDUSTRY views 36
Impressive achievements, but still room for improvement At the time of its handback to China in 1999, Macau’s transition from a colonial outpost to a semi-autonomous global gaming powerhouse was far from assured. David Green*
Principal, Newpage
T
he Portuguese had left behind a substantial cultural legacy and several thousand expatriates, but the exchequer was bare, and 450 years of foreign control had left the territory without the empowerment and enablement for independence of thought of its leaders, and with limited institutional capacity and skills to assure its future. Macau’s human capital was restricted to a population of 420,000, occupying a land area of no more than 28 square kilometres. Per capita GDP then was US$15,500, about 60 percent of what it was in Hong Kong, which had become a Special Administrative Region some 2.5 years earlier than Macau. The newly operative
Asia Gaming Briefings | December 2019
Basic Law left Macau responsible for its own fiscal affairs, which it was required to conduct conservatively and with a view to balancing revenue and expenditure. Fast forward 20 years and Macau sits at the apex of the global gaming industry. Its nominal GDP of more than US$85,000 is approaching double that of Hong Kong, and is 25 percent higher than in Singapore, which opened its two mega integrated resorts in 2010. The SAR government generated a budget surplus in 2018 alone of more than US$5 billion, and has accumulated reserves of more than US$75 billion. Unemployment is structural, at under 2 percent. So all is good, right? Not
