Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the fourth quarter of 2017 benefited from the uptrend in exports of services and expanded by 8.0% year-on-year in real terms, higher than the 6.3% growth in the third quarter. External demand remained robust; the on-going considerable growth in the tourism and gaming industry drove up exports of services by 15.7% year-on-year, of which exports of gaming services and other tourism services grew by 16.3% and 15.4% respectively. The decline in investment persisted but narrowed, contracting by 14.2% year-on-year, whereas private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure expanded by 2.7% and 5.1% respectively. The implicit deflator of GDP, which measures the overall changes in prices, went up by 3.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2017. The economic growth rates for the first, second and third quarters of 2017 were revised upwards to 11.5%, 11.0% and 6.3% respectively.
For the whole year of 2017, the economy of Macao grew by 9.1% in real terms, ending the economic contraction for the past three consecutive years. The economy increased by 11.2% in the first half of 2017, followed by a 7.2% rise in the second half of the year. Although the whole economy resumed positive growth, domestic demand remained weak and retreated by 2.7% in 2017; private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure rose by 1.6% and 1.7% respectively, while gross fixed capital formation decreased by 10.0%. External demand rebounded. Total exports of services increased by 15.4% amid growth in the number of visitor arrivals and visitors’ spending; exports of gaming services and other tourism services went up by 16.4% and 15.4% respectively. Moreover, exports of goods rose by 12.3%.
In 2017, GDP amounted to MOP404.2 billion and per-capita GDP was MOP 622,803 (about USD 77,596). The implicit deflator of GDP increased by 2.3% year-on-year.
As regards GDP structure by major components, relative importance of net exports of goods and services to GDP rose by 5.8 percentage points from 41.6% in 2016 to 47.4% in 2017. By contrast, relative importance of domestic demand to GDP dropped by 5.8 percentage points to 52.6% in 2017 as the shares of investment and private consumption expenditure decreased by 3.2 percentage points and 2.1 percentage points respectively; meanwhile, the proportion of government final consumption expenditure fell marginally by 0.5 percentage points.