SME Bulletin
2
Issue 30 February 2011
 Up-to-date Information on Economy and Trade
Macao ranks 19th in Economic Freedom
The Heritage Foundation released its 2011 Report on the Index of Economic
Freedom. Macao’s overall score has improved slightly by 0.6 to 73.1, making the
SAR the 19th freest among 179 economies with assigned scores worldwide, up one
place from a year earlier. Macao is ranked 5th in the Asia-Pacific region while its
overall score is well above the world and regional averages.
(Source: Monetary Authority of Macao)
.
The value of total merchandise export of Macao in 2010 was MOP6.96
billion
Merchandise export of Macao remained sluggish in 2010; value of total merchandise
export fell by 9.3% year-on-year to, of which value of domestic exports and reexports declined by 19.6% and 2.8% respectively. Value of total merchandise import
rebounded to 2007-level, up by 19.6% from 2009 to MOP44.12 billion.
Merchandise trade deficit widened by 27.1% year-on-year to MOP37.16 billion in
2010; the exports/imports ratio went down by 5.0 percentage points year-on-year to
15.8%.
(Source: Statistics and Census Service Department)
Total visitor arrivals for the whole year of 2010 nearly 25,000,000
Total visitor arrivals reached 24,965,411 for the whole year of 2010, up by 14.8%
year-on-year. The majority of visitors were from Mainland China (13,229,058);
Hong Kong (7,466,139); Taiwan, China (1,292,734); Japan (413,507); Malaysia
(338,058) and Republic of Korea (331,768); meanwhile, visitors from Republic of
Korea and India soared by 62.0% and 57.3% in comparison with 2009. Same-day
visitors accounted for 52.2% of total visitor arrivals, at 13,039,540.
(Source: Statistics and Census Service Department)
The unemployment rate for October-December 2010 was 2.7%
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that the
employment situation showed continuous improvement; the unemployment rate for
October-December 2010 was 2.7%, down by 0.1 percentage point over the previous
period (September-November 2010), the lowest since the Handover of Macao to
China. The underemployment rate was 1.7%, same as that in the previous period.
Total labour force was 331,000 in October-December 2010 and the labour force
participation rate stood at 71.4%, up by 0.2 percentage point from the previous
period.
(Source: Statistics and Census Service Department)
--The End—