Gambling accounted for half of economic activity last year

Lotteries, other gambling and gaming promotion in Macau accounted for more than half of the territory’s economic activity in 2018, rising from 49% to 50.5% of the total, the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) reported.

In the same year, the weight of the tertiary sector in the economy increased by 0.9 percentage points, from 94.9% in 2017 to 95.8% in 2018, and the secondary sector lost the same percentage points from 5.1% to 4.2%.

DSEC reported that the main activities not directly related to gambling are public administration, education and other collective services, with a weight of 9.7%, real estate activities with 9.6%, banking and insurance 6.6% and wholesale and retail trade 4.6%.

The same document also stated that gross value added of all Macau business sectors in 2018 recorded a real increase of 5.8%, mainly driven by the increase in “lotteries, other gambling and games promotion activities” (+10%) and “hotels and similar” activities (+11.4%).

Secondary sector gross value added fell by 12.3% in real terms and its weight on the GVA of all economic sectors decreased to 4.2% in 2018.

In turn, the tertiary sector gross value added rose 6.8% in real terms and its weight increased to 95.8%, highlighting the 45.3% share of non-gaming services. MDT/Macauhub