Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the fourth quarter of 2013 expanded by 14.3% year-on-year in real terms, which was spurred by rising exports of services. Among the major components, exports of gaming services and exports of other tourism services grew by 17.1% and 10.6% respectively, merchandise exports went up by 15.9%, gross fixed capital formation expanded by 9.5%, private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure rose by 6.5% and 6.1% respectively, whereas merchandise imports and imports of services went up by 22.8% and 1.9% respectively.

For the whole year of 2013, GDP increased by 11.9% in real terms to MOP413.5 billion; per-capita GDP amounted to MOP697,502(about USD87,306). The economic growth was fuelled by the notable increase of 12.0% in exports of services on account of the impetus from the flourishing tourism and gaming sector; in particular, exports of gaming services grew by 12.4% and exports of other tourism services went up by 10.0%, which contributed 12.3 percentage points to economic growth. In respect of other components, despite the 27.3% rise in private investment, the substantial decrease of 48.1% in public investment narrowed down the growth in gross fixed capital formation apparently to 4.7%. Meanwhile, both private consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure rose by 6.3%, merchandise exports expanded by 11.4% and merchandise imports rose by 15.1%.

Conducive factors to the economic expansion include:

 an increase of 18.6% in gross gaming revenue;

 a rise of 4.4% in visitor arrivals and 13.7% increase in total spending of visitors;

 an increase of 11.8% in hotel guests;

 an upsurge of 27.3% in private investment;

 an increase of 23% in value of retail sales;

 monthly median employment earnings of the employed continued to increase.

GDP growth in real terms for the first 3 quarters of 2013 was revised to 11.9%, 9.8% and 11.2% respectively; economic growth for 2011 and 2012 was revised to 21.3% and 9.1% respectively. Moreover, the implicit deflator of GDP that measures overall changes in prices increased by 8.1% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 7.6% for the whole year of 2013.

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