Macau reached the end of May with a positive budget balance of around 10.451 billion patacas, down by 35.5 percent over the same period of last year. However the public accounts are starting to show a sign of recovery.
The public revenue from January to May of this year added up to 21.73 billion patacas, rose by 0.8 percent when compared with the first five months of 2008.
The positive balance, which went against the first five month trend, was due to an increase of over 11 times in capital prescriptions in comparison with the same period of last year, which brought in a total of 3.43 billion patacas. Given that current revenues, around 18.3 billion patacas suffered a break of 14 percent.
However, this break in current revenue was less steep than in previous months and showed an improvement in the gambling sector's revenues, whose direct taxation of 35 percent generated 15.32 billion patacas.
Still, while the public revenue was met in 45.2 percent of the predicted amount for the current year, the current revenue amounted to 44.6 percent and gaming taxes 51.6 percent of the estimated amount for all 12 months.
The total public expenditure of 11.28 billion patacas is rising to about a double, but only 23.5 percent of public expenditure was met. Meanwhile, the current expenditure reached 10.89 billion patacas, up by 110.7 percent in comparison with the first five months of last year, and 31.6 percent of the predicted expenditure have been met. In-between revenue and expenditure, not taking into account the previous years' accumulated interest of around 100 billion patacas, enough to cover two years full budget without revenue, Macau has a budget surplus of 10.451 billion patacas as of May 31, 2009.
Macau Daily Times
