Macau’s gold jewellery imports rose six percent year-on-year to 10.2 billion patacas last year, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced on Friday.
Gold jewellery, the city’s second import item after food and beverages combined, accounted for 11.4 percent of the total value of imports last year.
Watch imports rose 22.2 percent to 7.9 billion patacas. Mobile phone imports increased 21.5 percent to 7.5 billion patacas, but imports of handbags and wallets dropped 6.6 percent to 3.5 billion patacas.
Macau’s total value of exports rose nine percent to 9.9 billion patacas. Re-exports accounted for 79.6 percent of all exports.
Imports rose 11 percent to 89.9 billion patacas, resulting in a merchandise trade balance deficit of 80 billion patacas.
Most of Macau’s imports came from the mainland (33.2 percent), Hong Kong (10.3 percent), Switzerland (9 percent) and France (8.4 percent).
(macaunews/macaupost)
