The value of retail sales in the third quarter reached 20.2 billion patacas, according to data released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) – a quarter-on-quarter decline of almost 6 percent.
The cumulative value of retail sales in the first three quarters of this year stands at 65.6 billion patacas – exceeding the 56.4 billion logged for the same nine-month period in pre-pandemic 2019. However, the latest figures represent a consecutive quarterly decrease, with retail sales between the first and second quarter plunging by more than 10 percent.
For comparison, the value of retail sales in the last quarter of 2019 stood at 20.7 billion patacas. At their pandemic low point, in the second quarter of 2020, sales stood at just 6.8 billion patacas.
[See more: Retail sales plummeted by 10 percent in the second quarter of the year]
Among product categories, Chinese food products performed the best, followed by leather goods, department store purchases, clothing, and watches, clocks and jewellery.
Retailers polled by the DSEC were generally not optimistic for the last quarter of 2023, with almost 42 percent describing business prospects as “unfavourable” and a similar proportion believing them to be merely “stable.” Just 16.5 percent described their outlook as “favourable.”
Although economic forecasts for Macao are generally encouraging, analysts point to a number of continuing obstacles, including operational pressures on small-and-medium-sized enterprises and lacklustre consumer confidence in mainland China – by far the biggest source of punters for Macao’s gaming-dependent economy.
