1999-2014 | Macau, what changed?

A lot has changed in Macau over the past fifteen years. But the exponential increases in several social indicators do not only reflect positive changes, Lusa news agency reports in an article comparing statistical data from 1999 with today’s markers.
Back in 1999, Macau had around 430,000 residents; a number that has since increased to 631,000. The total number of non-resident workers has multiplied fivefold and now stands for 40 percent of the working population.
The average income per capita was below MOP5,000 in 1999, and has reached MOP13,000 in 2014. The unemployment rate decreased significantly, from 6.8 percent in 2000 to 1.7 percent now, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world.
Conversely, the region had an inflation rate of around 6 percent after years of deflation following the handover. Only in 2004 did Macau begin to register inflation again (0.98 percent), a trend that kept rising in 2005 (4.4 percent), and declining only in 2009 (1.18 percent), before an upturn that continues today.
Concerning housing, the average price per square meter has gone up ten times since the handover, surpassing the MOP100,000 mark for the first time in 2014.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) registered an annual growth of 12 percent between 2000 and 2013 and Macau’s per capita wealth stands fourth in the world ranking, ahead of Switzerland.
Government revenue has consistently surpassed expenses by far, which can be attributed to the surge in gaming revenue. The revenue generated by Stanley Ho’s casino monopoly stood at MOP23.496 billion in 2002. After the opening of the gaming market, those revenues have been on the rise. Total gaming revenue in 2013 surged 18 percent year-on-year, reaching MOP363.07 billion, according to data released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Service. That means that only one month of revenue registered in 2013 was higher than the whole year of 2002. According to Lusa, 35 casinos were operating in town in 2014, opposed to the 17 that operated in 2005, when the casino liberalization was starting to take effect.
Macau was known as a small, sleepy town, but that also changed dramatically. In 1999, the territory, under Portuguese administration, received around 7 million visitors. In 2013 it received four times more (30 million).
The roads have also felt the strain and now serve about twice the number of vehicles (237,500) than they did in 1999. The majority of those vehicles are motorcycles that swarmed the streets and became a kind of local icon.
In terms of telecommunications, the changes are striking but may be attributed to external factors (i.e., the technological evolution). There were around 141,000 registered mobile phone users in 1999 and that number has gone up to 1.7 million now, although most of those are pre-paid SIM cards. Internet users numbered 27,346 in 2000 and 262,863 in 2013.
Other social trends that largely surpass the territory have now been felt here. For example, the number of divorces went up from 283 cases in 1999 to 1,172 in 2013.  MDT/Lusa