Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped by 8.1% year-on-year in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2019, a steeper decline compared to the previous quarter, which was mainly attributable to a further decrease in exports of services. External demand continued to slow; exports of services fell by 7.5% year-on-year, with exports of gaming services and other tourism services reducing by 9.8% and 7.0% respectively. Exports of goods went down by 6.2%. As regards domestic demand, investment plunged by 13.9% year-on-year, whereas private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure rose by 2.7% and 1.9% respectively.
The economy of Macao has experienced negative growth since the first quarter of 2019, owing to decreases in investment and exports of services; as a result, the economy shrank by 4.7% in real terms for the whole year of 2019. Domestic demand weakened, down by 4.6% year-on-year; gross fixed capital formation fell by 20.1% as private construction investment showed a drastic decline. Despite an increase in total employment and employment earnings, the growth in private consumption expenditure slowed to 2.9% on the back of cautious consumer spending due to economic uncertainties. Government final consumption expenditure rose by 3.9% year-on-year, representing a 0.4 percentage point rise; compensation of employees and net purchases of goods and services went up by 2.4% and 5.7% respectively. With respect to external demand, total spending of visitors decreased in spite of a growth in visitor arrivals, and gross revenue from games of chance dropped at an accelerating pace as from the third quarter; hence, exports of services slid by 3.4% year-on-year, with exports of gaming services and other tourism services reducing by 4.0% and 5.7% respectively. Besides, exports of goods fell by 8.3%.
In 2019, GDP amounted to MOP434.7 billion and per-capita GDP was MOP645,438 (approximately USD79,977). Meanwhile, the implicit deflator of GDP, which measures overall changes in prices, rose by 2.6% in 2019 and 2.5% in the fourth quarter.
As regards GDP structure by major components, the relative importance of net exports of goods and services to GDP was 50.1% in 2019, up by 0.5 percentage points year-on-year. The relative importance of domestic demand to GDP was 49.9%, with the share of investment falling by 3.0 percentage points; the proportions of private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure rose by 1.6 percentage points and 0.9 percentage points respectively.
Meanwhile, the rate of change for GDP in the third quarter of 2019 was revised upward to -4.4%.