Macau attracted at least 223 investment projects in the first three quarters of this year worth about 3.4 billion patacas in total, showing investors’ confidence in Macau’s tourism industry, Commerce and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) President Vincent U U Sang said yesterday.
“In the first three quarters of this year, IPIM’s “One-stop Service” followed up on 223 investment projects, a year-on-year increase of 15 percent, involving investments amounting to 3.4 billion patacas, a surge of 188 percent year on year, mainly three hotel projects,” U said during yesterday’s phone-in programme Ou Mun Gwong Cheung (“Macau Talkshow”).
He also summarised IPIM’s work in the past five years, including Forum Macao’s 6th Ministerial Conference held in April and the signing of the new Strategic Plan for Economic and Trade Cooperation by China and the world’s nine Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs), which he described as Forum Macao’s most important work in the past five years.
U also said that IPIM, in the past six months, visited five Portuguese-speaking countries, among which it contacted a private enterprise in Angola in July. In addition, he added, the operational headquarters of a Portuguese-speaking country’s company was set up in Macau during last week’s Macao International Trade & Investment Fair (MIF).
‘Visitors spent more in Macau’: MGTO vice-chief
Meanwhile, while also attending yesterday’s phone-in programme hosted by public broadcaster TDM, Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Deputy Director Cheng Wai Tong noted that Macau received 26 million visitor arrivals in the first nine months of this year, recovering to 85 percent of the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, “slightly better than expected”, while the number of foreign tourists has returned to 70 percent of the pre-epidemic level.
Independent travellers make up the majority of Macau’s total visitor arrivals, leisure activities and eating-out being the main purpose of their visit, Cheng said, citing figures from the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) as pointing out that the majority of visitors spent more in Macau this year than in 2019: “The per capita spending of tourists in 2019 stood at about 1,600 patacas, but by the first half of this year traveller spending had already reached 2,260 patacas per capita, an increase of nearly 40 percent”.
Macau’s visitor arrivals are now younger and mostly female, according to Cheng.
Commerce and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) President Vincent U U Sang speaks to reporters after yesterday’s phone-in programme Ou Mun Gwong Cheung hosted by public broadcast TDM. – Photo courtesy of TDM
