Housing and fuel become biggest household expenses

The share of total consumption costs that the average person spends on ‘housing and fuel’ has surpassed the “food and non-alcoholic beverages” segment to become the largest category of expenditure. It rose by 1.2 percentage points from five years earlier to reach 26.9 percent.

The finding was revealed in the 2017/2018 Household Budget Survey released by the Statistics and Census Service.

Conducted every five years, the two categories contributed 48.8 percent to the total consumption expenditure, down by 2.6 percentage points.

As regards consumption pattern of households, monthly consumption expenditure outside Macau amounted to MOP791 million, up by 61 percent in real terms compared with 2012/2013.

Meanwhile, spending in Zhuhai accounted for 44.1 percent of the consumption expenditure outside of Macau.

The survey showed that the monthly consumption expenditure of all households in the SAR amounted to MOP6.79 billion, up by 28.5 percent from 2012/2013 in nominal terms or 9.4 percent in real terms, after removing the effect of inflation.

The average monthly consumption expenditure was MOP35,488 per household, an increase of 3.6 percent in real terms.

LAGGING INCOMES

The average income per household rose by 14.1 percent in real terms in the latest Household Budget Survey, with the total monthly income of all households reaching MOP10.62 billion in 2017/2018.

The average monthly income stood at MOP55,497 per household and the monthly disposable income was MOP52,314 per household, up by 14.1 percent and 12.7 percent in real terms, respectively. The change indicates that essential costs have risen faster than incomes.

The Gini coefficient of Macau was 0.36 in 2017/2018, up slightly from 0.35 recorded in 2012/2013, which was attributed to population ageing and smaller household size. LV