Macau’s July casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) rose 5.1 percent month-on-month, to just under MOP18.60 billion (US$2.31 billion), according to a Thursday announcement from the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
Judged year-on-year, the result was an 11.6 percent improvement from the MOP16.66 billion in GGR in July last year.
The latest monthly figure took Macau’s GGR for the first seven months this year to MOP132.35 billion, up 36.7 percent on the prior-year period, and represents 76.1 percent of the GGR achieved in the first seven months of 2019.
On July 22, JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd had said the GGR run-rate in the third week of July had in likelihood been “flattish” week-on-week at MOP635 million a day, though much higher than the MOP550 million a day in the first week of July.
The brokerage said the improvement reflected “pretty decent – albeit not fantastic – demand from summer holidays, despite concerns regarding a crackdown on illegal foreign currency exchange gangs”.