Macau’s mobile phone imports jumped 179 percent to 1.18 billion patacas last month, the Statistics and Census Bureau announced Thursday.
In the first 10 months of the year, mobile phone imports rose nearly 87 percent to 5.86 billion patacas.
Macau’s total merchandise imports between January and October increased 23.1 percent to 74.3 billion patacas. Last month’s imports grew 37.8 percent to 8.52 billion patacas.
Total merchandise exports rose 8 percent to 10.12 billion patacas between January and October. Last month’s exports rose 31.2 percent to 1.06 billion patacas.
Re-exports accounted for 88 percent of Macau’s total exports last month and 87 percent in the January-October period.
In the first 10 months, Macau exported watches worth 1.08 billion patacas, up 23 percent year-on-year, and baby formula worth nearly 500 million patacas, a year-on-year increase of 17.9 percent.
Most of Macau’s imports in the first 10 months originated from the Chinese mainland (34.8 percent), Italy (8.7 percent), France (8.5 percent), Japan (8.4 percent), and Switzerland (7.8 percent.
Most exports between January and October went to Hong Kong (62.3 percent) and mainland China (16.8 percent). A mere 1.6 percent and 1 percent of Macau’s exports were shipped to the EU and US respectively.
The external merchandise trade deficit reached 64.18 billion at the end of October.
