Lotteries, other gambling and gaming promotion in Macau accounted for more than half of the territory’s economic activity in 2018, rising from 49.0% to 50.5% of the total, an increase of 1.5 percentage points, the region’s Census and Statistics Bureau 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%.

By dis-aggregating the 49.5% not directly related to gambling by industry, the Statistics and Census Bureau reported that the main activities 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 (GVA) 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” (+10.0%) and “hotels and similar” (+11.4%).

Secondary sector GVA 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 GVA rose 6.8% in real terms and its weight increased to 95.8%, highlighting the 45.3% share of “non-gaming services” (-0 .6 percentage points over 2017).

Taxes on production and imports (125.8 billion patacas), operating surplus (191.2 billion patacas) and employee remuneration (120.7 billion patacas) respectively accounted for 28.7%, 43.7% and 27.6% of the 2018 Gross Domestic Product. (Macauhub)