Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that licensed motor vehicles in Macao totalled 241,350 as at end-March 2020, an increase of 1.1% year-on-year. Light automobiles (110,032) and heavy motorcycles (100,238) rose by 1.8% and 2.5% respectively, whereas light motorcycles (23,691) dropped by 6.4%. New registration of motor vehicles in March reduced by 14.3% year-on-year to 977, with that of heavy motorcycles (524) and light automobiles (366) falling by 19.4% and 9.9% respectively. In the first quarter of 2020, new registration of motor vehicles decreased by 24.8% year-on-year to 2,326. Number of traffic accidents in March declined by 41.1% year-on-year to 646, and number of injuries totalled 237. In the first quarter, there were 2,089 traffic accidents, involving 734 victims and 3 of them were killed.
As affected by the anti-epidemic measures, cross-border vehicular traffic in March declined by 54.1% year-on-year to 203,451 trips, of which vehicular trips passing through the Border Gate (130,427) and the Checkpoint of Cotai (42,973) tumbled by 54.8% and 66.6% respectively. However, trips crossing the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge grew by 23.5% to 28,441. In the first quarter of 2020, cross-border vehicular traffic dropped by 40.4% year-on-year to 758,977 trips. Meanwhile, arriving and departing commercial flights at the Macau International Airport in March plunged by 91.1% year-on-year to 527 trips, with only 178 trips to and from mainland China, an obvious decline of by 92.3%. In the first quarter, arriving and departing commercial flights fell by 51.3% year-on-year to 8,411 trips.
Gross weight of containerized cargo by land in March grew by 28.3% year-on-year to 1,777 tonnes, all of which passed through the Checkpoint of Cotai (+33.1%). On the other hand, gross weight of port containerized cargo decreased by 37.8% to 7,830 tonnes, with cargo handled at the Ká-Hó Harbour (826 tonnes) diving by 85.9%; meanwhile, cargoshippedthrough the Inner Harbour (7,004 tonnes) rose by 3.9%. In the first quarter, gross weight of containerized cargo by land increased by 13.1% year-on-year to 5,077 tonnes, while that of port containerized cargo dropped by 27.5% to 26,440 tonnes.
The Macau International Airport handled 2,327 tonnes of air cargo in March, a drop of 35.0% year-on-year. Gross weight of inward cargo (173 tonnes), outward cargo (1,948 tonnes) and transit cargo (206 tonnes) tumbled by 69.2%, 23.8% and 55.3% respectively. In the first quarter, air cargo reduced by 26.0% year-on-year to 6,401 tonnes.
As at the end of March 2020, there were 114,633 fixed-line telephone subscribers, down by 6.3% year-on-year; meanwhile, number of mobile phone subscribers rose by 6.5% to 2,290,759. Internet subscribers grew by 8.6% year-on-year to 600,971 in March and the duration of internet usage went up by 7.3% to 137 million hours. Total duration of internet usage reached 404 million hours in the first quarter, an increase of 7.7% year-on-year.