Casinos in several Asian countries have seen a rise in business because Taiwanese visitors are hoping to recoup at the gambling tables what they lost at home on the stock market, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
Flights to Macau as well as Cebu and Subic Bay in the Philippines have been packed recently with Taiwanese gamblers, the United Evening News reported.
Taiwan's stock market has shed more than 40 per cent in a protracted decline the past six months because of political instability and the new government's confusing economic policies.
In the past three months alone, each of the more than 6 million Taiwanese stock investors lost an average 800,000 Taiwan dollars (HK$195,000) when stocks fell 25 per cent, according to estimates by securities houses.
The newspaper quoted travel agents as saying they fly at least 60 Taiwanese to the Philippine resort of Cebu daily for a gambling trip of up to five days.
But many of the ''stock revengers'' returned from the casinos with heavier losses, it said.
Gambling is illegal in Taiwan.
Also on Saturday, a newspaper reported that an assembly line worker at a Taiwanese computer firm offered to sell one of his kidneys on the Internet for 2 million Taiwan dollars to help repay debts incurred from stock investments.
The United Daily News quoted the 26-year-old man as saying many of his colleagues sold their cars or houses to repay stock debts, but he had only his kidney to sell.
''We bought what analysts told us were blue-chip stocks, but they are almost valueless now,'' the man, surnamed Chung, was quoted as saying.
Taiwan bans the selling of human organs. |
