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Trade deficit surges as import figure refuses to fall

02
Apr '08

According to the trade results, the total volume of goods worth 2.8 billion patacas were imported by Macau, marking an increase of 16.4 percent in February 2008 compared to the previous year.

The value of exported goods amounting to 905 million patacas in February registered a year-on-year decline of 27.6 percent.

Of these, domestic volume of exports reflected a drop of 40.4 percent to reach 524 million patacas, while re-exports surged by 2.7 percent to touch 381 million patacas in the same period.

Experts recorded a trade deficit of 1.91 billion patacas for the month of February. The total value of exports dropped by 10.0 percent, in the first two months of 2008, to reach 2.66 billion patacas. In the same line, domestic exports and re-exports also declined by 11.0 percent and 7.9 percent respectively.

In contrast to this, the value of imports grew by 14.7 percent to touch 6.51 billion patacas causing a trade deficit of 3.85 billion patacas. In fact, the overall export-import ratio declined from 52.1 percent in the first two months of 2007 to 40.9 percent in 2008.

Textile and garments accounted for 62.3 percent of the total values of exports in January-February months of this year recording a drop of 13.9 percent over the same period last year.

A plunge of 2.6 percent was seen in the export of non-textile like machines and footwear which saw a fall of 47.4 and 34.3 percent respectively.

The US and EU emerged as the major markets for Macau exports together accounting for 58.5 percent of the total value of exports.

However, compared to the previous year, the value of exports decreased by 7.2 and 26.8 percent for US and EU respectively.

Imports were largely made from the Asian region with Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong alone comprising 50.2 percent of the total value of imports in January and February of 2008. A year-on-year rise of 8.5 and 12.5 percent was recorded for imports.

Figures for the import of raw materials also decreased by 12.3 percent for the ongoing year.

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