Macau’s imports of gold jewellery in January fell 56.5 percent year-on-year to 641 million patacas, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced on Tuesday.
Imports of handbags and wallets dropped 35.3 percent to 265 million patacas. Imports of watches dropped six percent to 665 million patacas.
Gold jewellery, handbags and watches are popular with shoppers from the mainland.
However, imports of mobile phones, which also are popular with mainland shoppers, leapt 46.3 percent to 1.33 billion patacas.
Mobile phones were Macau’s number-one import item in January, ahead of food and beverages.
Total imports decreased 1.2 percent to 8.5 billion patacas, while total exports rose 2.9 percent to 960 million patacas, resulting in a merchandise trade balance deficit of 7.7 billion patacas. Re-exports accounted for 80.6 percent of all exports.
While most exports were shipped to Hong Kong (64.2 percent), most imports originated from the mainland (35.6 percent), the US (9.7 percent), Hong Kong (7.7 percent), France (7.7 percent) and Switzerland (7.7 percent).
(macaunews/macaupost)
