Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that licensed motor vehicles in Macao totalled 247,230 as at end-March 2022, up by 1.1% year-on-year; light automobiles (113,127) and heavy motorcycles (106,207) increased by 1.3% and 2.7% respectively. New registration of motor vehicles in March dropped by 21.9% year-on-year to 1,025, of which 184 were electric vehicles. There were 565 heavy motorcycles (32 of them were electric) and 443 light automobiles (149 of them were electric), representing decreases of 20.9% and 21.5% respectively. In the first quarter of 2022, new registration of motor vehicles went down by 14.5% year-on-year to 2,998. Number of traffic accidents in March went up by 11.2% year-on-year to 1,065, with one person killed and 351 persons injured. In the first quarter of 2022, there were 2,987 traffic accidents, which resulted in one death and 1,001 injuries.
Cross-border vehicular traffic in March fell by 12.4% year-on-year to 334,616 trips, of which light automobile trips (300,911) dipped by 14.6%. Meanwhile, gross weight of containerized cargo by land in March swelled by 88.4% year-on-year to 4,249 tonnes; cargo passing through the Checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (4,175 tonnes) took up 98.3% of the total. In the first quarter of 2022, cross-border vehicular traffic (912,022 trips) decreased 13.1% year-on-year while gross weight of containerized cargo by land (8,746 tonnes) rose by 41.7%.
Gross weight of port containerized cargo increased by 6.1% year-on-year to 14,661 tonnes in March; cargo being handled at the Inner Harbour (9,987 tonnes) and the Ká-Hó Harbour (4,674 tonnes) showed respective growth of 5.3% and 7.9%. In the first quarter of 2022, gross weight of port containerized cargo went up by 17.5% year-on-year to 39,238 tonnes.
Arriving and departing commercial flights totalled 965 trips in March, a drop of 20.6% year-on-year. Gross weight of air cargo expanded by 55.3% year-on-year to 5,353 tonnes in March, of which inward cargo (486 tonnes) and outward cargo (4,840 tonnes) increased by 51.4% and 55.4% respectively. In the first quarter of 2022, number of arriving and departing commercial flights went up by 35.0% year-on-year to 3,745 trips, along with an uplift of 50.5% in the gross weight of air cargo (12,619 tonnes).
As at the end of March 2022, there were 98,076 fixed-line telephone subscribers, down by 6.9% year-on-year. Number of mobile phone subscribers decreased by 6.4% year-on-year to 1,266,501; prepaid SIM card subscribers (359,037) declined by 30.9% whereas postpaid subscribers (907,464) rose by 8.8%. Internet subscribers totalled 682,204 as at end-March, an increase of 6.9% year-on-year. The duration of internet usage in March grew by 5.5% year-on-year to 142 million hours. The total duration of internet usage in the first quarter of 2022 went up by 4.6% to 414 million hours.