Stanley Au says gaming operators will face losses in Cotai

Stanley Au

The head of the Small and Medium Enterprises Association, Stanley Au, has said that gaming operators have been “too ambitious” in Macau and that the new Cotai development will suffer losses.
Au was skeptical about what optimists refer to as the “new casino effect,” which posits that new Cotai developments will boost the gaming industry and restore revenues to pre-dip levels.
However, Au attributed the fall in gaming revenue to the anti-corruption campaign in Beijing, and said that new developments would not relieve the pressure on gaming operators.
“The ‘new casino effect’ will not bring any good, and in contrast, I believe new casinos will bring deficit to the gaming corporations. Gaming companies were too ambitious when building the new casinos in Cotai. They shouldn’t have been built,” Au recently told TDM.
Au’s association issued a whitepaper calling on the government to implement two different sets of policies for what he termed the “virtual economy,” including industries such as gaming, and the “real economy,” which includes small and medium-sized enterprises.
“When the virtual economy faces difficulty, they have less revenue and need to downsize. Their imported laborers should return home. However, the real economy suffers from manpower shortages. We should be allowed to import workers,” he continued, adding that the government should limit the pace and scale of the gaming industry’s growth.
Melco Crown Entertainment’s Studio City opened last month. Several other developments are scheduled to open in 2016 and 2017, including the Wynn Palace and the Lisboa Palace.

SMES struggle with manpower shortage

The Industry and Commerce Association of Macau Northern District has said that despite the government’s support for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), these organizations still face a critical labor shortage. Ma Kin Cheong, director of the group, says that SMEs depend on migrant workers, without whom they “wouldn’t be able to run [their] businesses.”  While some have accredited the lack of local manpower to above-market salaries in casinos, the Federation of Trade Unions says that it wants to prioritize re-training residents, who they claim “also cannot find an ideal job”, adding that there is a structural imbalance for employment in the SAR.