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Created on Friday, 04 April 2008 13:51

Macau Casino Boom 

The former Portuguese colony of Macau in China, just over the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, itself an old colonial trading post, is now the rich man of Asia accroding to the latest statistics on GDP. It beats Asian tigers Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan among others and has even overtaken the super rich oil state of Brunei. 

GDP per head in Macau went up 27 percent to $36,357 last year and, with its population of around 538,000, ithis makes it the 20th richest economy by GDP per head on the planet. Macau now beats Italy and is just behind Germany and France.

This is mostly due to gambling revenues, according to the experts, which went up a staggering 47% and now top $10.34 billion. Economic gurus are predicting that this will continue to grow with by 23 percent in 2008 and 20 percent for the next 2 years.

However wages rose by only 7.5 & last year suggesting that the wave of money is not being distributed that widely so far. Inflation was up 9.5 %, and rents shot up by 15.6 % affecting the spending power of its citizens.

Macua has been experiencing a boom in gambling, the likes of which have never been seen. Its revenue have now overtaken those of Las Vegas