Macau’s casino revenue rose to 26 billion patacas ($3.2 billion) in the first quarter of 2009, up 8.1 percent from 24.1 billion patacas in the last three months of 2008. The increase in revenue stops a nine-mouth slide according to a Bloomberg.com report citing statistics from the Macau Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau Web site.

2009 first-quarter revenue in Macau is still down 13 percent year-over-year from the first quarter 2008, which saw casinos report a record 29.8 billion patacas.