MACAO, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- The total merchandise import to Macao in July 2019 fell by 3.2 percent year-on-year to 7.20 billion patacas (about 891.09 million U.S. dollars), the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistic service said here on Saturday.
The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that imports of mobile phones, construction materials and gold jewellery dropped by 54.4 percent, 41.1 percent and 22.9 percent in July respectively. Meanwhile, imports of beauty and cosmetic products, food and beverages increased by 41.2 percent and 19.6 percent respectively.
The DSEC report added that from January to July 2019, the total value of merchandise import fell by 2.2 percent year-on-year to 49.48 billion patacas (about 6.12 billion dollars).
By place of origin, merchandise import from Chinese mainland decreased by 5.4 percent year-on-year to 16.49 billion patacas (about 2.04 billion dollars) in the first seven months of 2019.
The imports from the European Union (13.52 billion patacas or 1.67 billion dollars), the Belt and Road Countries (7.78 billion patacas or 962.87 million dollars) and the Portuguese-speaking Countries (506 million patacas or 63 million dollars) increased by 6.5 percent, 97.0 percent and 10.3 percent respectively.
Imports of consumer goods went up by 6.6 percent to 34.55 billion patacas (about 4.28 billion dollars), with imports of beauty and cosmetic products and footwear rising by 35.9 percent and 23.9 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, imports of mobile phones (2.56 billion patacas or 316.83 million dollars) and construction materials (842 million patacas or 104 million dollars) declined by 37.3 percent and 33.2 percent respectively in the first seven months of 2019.
