MACAO, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Macao's total merchandise import fell by 30.3 percent year-on-year to 3.87 billion patacas (about 485.08 million U.S. dollars) in February, the lowest single-month figure since March 2011, due to a decline in economic activity amid the spread of the COVID-19, the special administrative region's statistic department said here on Monday.
The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that the imports of gold jewellery, mobile phones and watches plunged by 73.9 percent, 68.3 percent and 57.9 percent respectively. But the imports of other textile articles including face masks jumped by 854.6 percent and imports of pharmaceutical products increased by 57.6 percent.
In the first two months of 2020, the total value of merchandise import declined by 14.1 percent year-on-year to 12.32 billion patacas (about 1.54 billion dollars), the DSEC report added.
The import from the mainland and the European Union decreased by 17.2 percent and 8.9 percent respectively year-on-year to 4.05 billion patacas (about 507.65 million dollars) and 3.71 billion patacas (about 465.03 million dollars) in the first two months of 2020.
On the other hand, imports from the Belt and Road countries leapt by 95.1 percent to 2.59 billion patacas (about 324.64 million dollars), while imports from the Portuguese speaking countries shrank by 19.2 percent to 130 million patacas (about 16 million dollars).
The imports of consumer goods went down by 13.3 percent to 8.80 billion patacas (about 1.10 billion dollars), with imports of garments and footwear, and watches falling by 25.7 percent and 24.9 percent respectively.
In addition, the imports of fuels and lubricants (949 million patacas or 119 million dollars), mobile phones (569 million patacas or 71 million dollars) and construction materials (202 million patacas or 25 million dollars) recorded decreases of 9.1 percent, 46.2 percent and 0.7 percent respectively.
