Macau’s gold jewellery imports fell 44 percent year-on-year to 651 million patacas in July, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced Thursday.
The import of mobile phones dropped 17 percent to 376 million patacas, while the import of handbags and wallets fell 11 percent to 259 million patacas last month.
However, watch imports rose 10 percent to 646 million patacas.
Gold jewellery, watches, mobile phones and handbags are popular with shoppers from the mainland.
In July, Macau’s exports rose two percent year-on-year to 759 million patacas. Re-exports accounted for 79.9 percent of all exports. Imports rose four percent to 7.2 billion patacas, resulting in a merchandise trade balance deficit of 6.5 billion patacas.
In the first seven months, exports rose eight percent to 5.8 billion patacas, while imports grew 12 percent to 50.5 billion patacas, resulting in a trade balance deficit of 44.7 billion patacas.
Most imports between January and July originated from the mainland (32 percent), Hong Kong (10 percent), Switzerland (10 percent), France (9 percent) and Italy (7 percent).
Most exports were shipped to Hong Kong (59 percent) and the mainland (15 percent).
Meanwhile, according to an earlier DSEC announcement, Macau’s retail sales for the second quarter dropped 11 percent from the previous quarter to 16.4 billion patacas. Watches and jewellery accounted for 26 percent of all retail sales.
Year-on-year, retail sales grew three percent year-on-year in the April-June period.
In the first seven months, Macau recorded 18 million visitor arrivals, up eight percent year-on-year. Mainlanders and Hongkongers accounted for 68 percent and 20 percent of all visitor arrivals respectively.
The number of visitor arrivals in July averaged 88,819 a day.
(macaunews/macaupost)
