Macao SAR Sees Bigger Trade Surplus in 1st Half YearThe Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China scored a trade surplus of 780 million patacas (97.5 million US dollars) in the first half of 2000, the latest official statistics show.The trade surplus was about 40 times of that in the same period last year, according to the figures released Thursday by the Statistics and Census Services of the Macao SAR government. In the six months, the area's export and import volumes were 9.27 billion patacas (1.159 billion dollars) and 8.49 billion patacas (1.061 billion dollars), respectively. Textiles and garments remained the leading export items, accounting for 82.4 percent of all exports from January to June. On the whole, exports to the United States and the European Union took up 46.2 percent and 30.2 percent, respectively, of the total export volumes. And those to China's inland areas and Hong Kong represented 17.4 percent. Most imports came from the Asian-Pacific region. China's inland areas and Hong Kong supplied 56.1 percent of the total while goods from the United States and the European Union accounted for 12.8 percent. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/ |