| Macao's GDP grows 13.2% in 2008 amid global financial crisis |
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| Saturday,March 28,2009 Posted: 15:48 BJT(0748 GMT) |
| From:www.chinaview.cn Article type:Reproduced |
Macao's economy sustained rapid growth last year as its GDP rose by 13.2 percent year-on-year in real terms although negative growth did occur in the fourth quarter, the SAR's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) said on Friday.
Entering the second half of last year, local economy was hit by the adverse impact of the global financial crisis and the mainland authorities' decision to limit the times of trips to Macao made by its residents, due to which local gaming and tourism sector started to slow down, and total investment continued to fall, bringing the entire economy to "contract obviously", the DSEC said.
Local GDP for the fourth quarter of last year registered the first negative growth during the past five years, with the GDP in the period shrinking by 7.6 percent in real terms, upon declining exports of gaming services, investment and exports of goods.
In spite of the negative factors mentioned above, the strong economic growth recorded in the first half of last year still brought Macao's GDP for the whole of 2008 to an estimated amount of 171.87 billion patacas (21.8 billion dollars), up 13.2 percent year-on-year in real terms, with per-capita GDP amounting to 313,091 patacas ( 39,036 dollars), according to the DSEC.
The figures showed that the SAR's economic growth for the first and second quarters were revised upward from 32.3 percent and 22.2 percent to 32.5 percent and 22.4 percent respectively, while that for the third quarter was revised downward from 11.3 percent to 10.4 percent.
The SAR saw its gross gaming revenue (excluding gratuities) surged by 31 percent year-on-year in 2008, while total visitor arrivals exceeded 22 million, with total visitor spending (excluding gaming expenses) registering a 2.2 percent growth in real terms, according to the DSEC.
Meanwhile, Macao's total investment (gross fixed capital formation plus changes in inventories) plunged noticeably by 18.7 percent last year, lowering its relative importance to GDP from 27.4 percent in 2007 to 19.7 percent in 2008.
In addition, local private consumption expenditure growth rate was still lower than that of the overall economic growth, which led to the drop of its relative importance to local GDP from 23.7 percent in 2007 to 22.5 percent in 2008, while that of government final consumption expenditure decreased slightly from 7.4 percent in 2007 to 6.5 percent in 2008. |
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