Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that new registration of motor vehicles decreased by 35.5% year-on-year to 1,208 in December 2016. For the whole year of 2016, new registration of motor vehicles dropped by 29.1% year-on-year to 13,935, with that of motorcycles (7,784) and light automobiles (5,395) falling by 23.8% and 38.6% respectively. As at the end of December 2016, total number of licensed motor vehicles reached 250,450, up slightly by 0.6% year-on-year; number of motorcycles (131,139) rose by 1.2% while that of light automobiles (111,545) edged down by 0.5%. There were 1,440 cases of traffic accidents in December and number of casualties totalled 458. In 2016, number of traffic accidents decreased by 2.9% year-on-year to 15,342 cases, resulting in 4,622 casualties and 9 of them were killed.
Cross-border vehicle traffic totalled 405,150 trips in December 2016, down by 9.6% year-on-year. In 2016, cross-border vehicle traffic decreased by 1.2% year-on-year to 5,070,874 trips, with 75.7% passing through the Border Gate. Passenger ferry movements between Macao and Mainland China and between Macao and Hong Kong rose slightly by 0.9% year-on-year to 12,277 trips in December, and movements for the whole year of 2016 dropped by 5.0% to 138,164 trips.
Commercial flight movements at the Macao International Airport totalled 4,491 in December 2016, down by 3.6% year-on-year. In 2016, commercial flight movements increased by 2.7% year-on-year to 53,617; flight movements to and from the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Taiwan grew by 38.3%, 8.3% and 7.7% respectively, while movements to and from Mainland China and Vietnam dropped by 4.4% and 0.5%. Helicopter flight movements between Macao and Mainland China and between Macao and Hong Kong increased by 19.4% year-on-year to 1,276 in December, and movements for the whole year of 2016 fell by 17.0% to 11,657.
Gross weight of seaborne containerized cargo dropped slightly by 0.6% year-on-year to 16,388 tonnes in December 2016. Seaborne container throughput totalled 11,624 TEU, equivalent to 8,014 containers handled, down by 7.9% and 5.3% respectively year-on-year. In 2016, gross weight of seaborne containerized cargo decreased by 28.8% year-on-year to 179,557 tonnes, of which 52.5% (94,340 tonnes) passed through Inner Harbour; seaborne container throughput (129,416 TEU) and containers handled (89,036) fell by 13.6% and 11.8% respectively.
Gross weight of containerized cargo by land decreased by 69.2% year-on-year to 1,125 tonnes in December. For the whole year of 2016, gross weight of containerized cargo by land dropped by 20.3% year-on-year to 20,750 tonnes, of which cargo through the Checkpoint of Cotai (18,251 tonnes) accounted for 88.0%.
The Macao International Airport handled 3,666 tonnes of air cargo in December 2016, up by 20.9% year-on-year. For the whole year of 2016, air cargo increased by 9.4% year-on-year to 32,891 tonnes, of which inward cargo (6,427 tonnes) dropped by 13.3% while outward cargo (19,622 tonnes) and transit cargo (6,842 tonnes) rose by 20.5% and 7.4% respectively. In 2016, inward air cargo from Taiwan (55.9% of total) decreased by 21.2% year-on-year whereas outward air cargo to Taiwan (45.8% of total) went up by 26.4%.
At the end of December 2016, number of fixed-line telephone subscribers decreased by 7.8% year-on-year to 134,748. Number of mobile telephone subscribers rose by 3.9% to 1,969,972, of which stored-value GSM card subscribers (1,269,363) accounted for 64.4%. Number of internet subscribers increased by 7.2% year-on-year to 363,372. In 2016, the cumulative duration of internet usage reached 1.17 billion hours, up by 9.7% year-on-year.