Carmo Correia/Lusa

Economic recovery is expected to drag on beyond summer – economist

Economist José Sales Marques told the Portuguese news agency Lusa on Tuesday that the economic recovery of the territory and game activity due to the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus is likely to drag on beyond the summer.

“The recovery will necessarily take some time, most likely beyond the summer,” said the professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Macau (IPM).

“We still live in a situation of uncertainty” and “the WHO [World Health Organization] itself says it is unpredictable” to know when the outbreak can be contained in China, he said.

That is why Sales Marques praised the management made by the Government of Macau to reduce both the risk of contagion of the Covid-19 coronavirus in the territory, and the social and economic support measures to respond to the impact of the outbreak.

“We are exposed to great threats, from the point of view of the ease with which this virus is spread, and that is why the measures to contain the number of visitors are justified, the measures that are being applied with regard to the access of the Chinese from the continent to Macau,” he maintained.

“And also, obviously, the measure that is almost unprecedented of the closing of the casinos”, he added, to conclude: among the preventive actions for reasons of public health and safeguarding the economy “there is a certain balance”.

João Carreira