Cross-border traffic rose by 21% in 2025, ferries and flights dropped

Cross-border vehicular traffic grew by 21.1% year-on-year in 2025 to 11,133,988 trips, according to a statistics release from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

Light passenger car trips rose even further by 22.8% year-on-year to 10,557,451, of which Hengqin single-plate vehicle trips (2,300,000) and trips made under the “Northbound Travel for Macao Vehicles” policy (1,657,000) increased by 45.6% and 11.4%, respectively.

In contrast, passenger ferry trips (77,549) and arrivals and departures at Macau International Airport (MIA) (55,576) declined by 2.6% and 1.8%, respectively.

In terms of cross-border cargo, the gross weight of containerized cargo by land (74,205 tonnes) grew by 5.4% year-on-year in 2025, whereas port containerized cargo (187,090 tonnes) declined by 4%.

Gross weight of air cargo rose by 1.2% year-on-year to 109,292 tonnes, of which gross weight of outward cargo (98,439 tonnes) and transit cargo (5,820 tonnes) expanded by 0.8% and 16.1%, respectively, while inward cargo (5,033 tonnes) fell by 5.1%.

December shows improvement at MIA

Taking December 2025 as a standalone month, cross-border vehicular traffic (997,779 trips), passenger ferry trips (6,659 trips), and arriving and departing commercial flights at Macau International Airport (MIA) (5,195 trips) all recorded increases of 17.1%, 0.1%, and 4.8% year-on-year, respectively.

On this occasion, the MIA recorded the largest increase (almost 5%), in contrast to the year’s overall performance, which declined by 1.8%.

As for cargo, in December last year, the gross weight of containerized cargo by land (7,018 tonnes), port containerized cargo (16,678 tonnes), and air cargo (10,812 tonnes) increased by 6.4%, 0.7%, and 8.9% year-on-year, respectively.

Vehicle registration dropped 14%

In 2025, registrations of new motor vehicles decreased 13.8% year-on-year to 11,117, of which 37.8% (4,204) were electric vehicles, up 6.4% from the previous year.

In December, new motor vehicle registrations rose 1.8% year-on-year to 1,057, with electric vehicles accounting for 471 (44.6%).

For the whole year of 2025, traffic accidents fell by 5.6% year-on-year to 14,638, with seven persons killed and 5,382 persons injured. It is worth noting that December alone accounted for 1,060 traffic accidents, resulting in three deaths (almost half of the annual total) and 399 injuries.

1.5 million subscribe to mobile phone services

DSEC statistics covering communication also show that at the end of 2025, the number of mobile phone subscribers (1,495,213) and internet subscribers (785,000) grew by 3.2% and 1.3% year-on-year, respectively.

The total duration of internet usage for the whole year of 2025 dropped by 1.2% to 1.75 billion hours, while internet usage in December fell by 1.6% to 144 million hours.

DSEC noted that of the almost 1.5 million mobile phone subscribers, over 1 million (1,099,308) were postpaid subscribers, representing a 5.4% increase. At the same time, prepaid card subscribers (395,905) declined by 2.5%.

Fixed-line telephone subscribers declined 6.3% year-on-year to 76,571.