Jake's View | It will take more than Beijing’s latest remedies to fix Macau’s troubles

[President] Xi’s nationwide crackdown on corruption started to scare off Chinese high rollers and triggered an unprecedented plunge in gaming revenue, which began in June 2014 and continued in the following months. More than two years later, with casino revenue slowly recovering and more non-casino attractions opening for business, Macau looks primed to embrace new challenges.

SCMP, October 17

Ahem ... continued only “in the following months”? Ahem ... “slowly recovering?” Let’s put some statistical perspective on this.

The decline in Macau’s economic growth may no longer be quite as serious as the 24 per cent year on year plunge it suffered in the second quarter last year but the latest figure still stands at a negative 7 per cent and shows overall output down 35 per cent from its peak in the fourth quarter of 2013.

To put some further perspective on this, only twice over the 55 years of Hong Kong’s economic history which I have on record has quarterly gross domestic product ever been lower than 7 per cent and then only marginally so.

But Hong Kong has never suffered anything like a 24 per cent drop in quarterly growth. By any definition Macau has endured an economic collapse over the last two years, an ongoing one that hardly leaves it “primed to embrace new challenges”.