Macau Special Administrative Region
|
|
|
|
General information on Macau’s development
Macau Special Administrative Region is part of China, which can not be separated. It is located at the southeastern coastal area and the west bank of the Pearl River Delta. It is adjacent to Guangdong Province. Its on-land distance with Hong Kong is 60 kilometers, while the distance with Guangzhou is 145 kilometers. The local time is 8 hours earlier than the standard Greenwich Time. The area of Macau has been increasing since the 19th century due to the on-going filling activities towards the sea. The area has grown from 10.28 square kilometers in the 19th century to the current 27.3 kilometers. Its total area is only 1/40 of Hong Kong and 1/23 of Singapore. Macau is made up of the Macau Island, Dangzai Island and Luhuan Island. The northern part of Macau Island is right adjacent to the mainland China. There are important bridges connecting the transportation of these separate islands, which include Jialebi Bridge, Friendship Bridge and Xiwan Bridge. There is also direct road connecting Dangzai and Luhuan Island with a total length of 2.2 kilometers and six separate vehicle paths. At the end of March 2005, the total population of Macau is 469,800. The population density however is over 17,000 persons per square kilometer. The northern part of the Macau Island has one of the highest population density all over the world.
In the first half of 2005, the Macau economy witnessed steady growth with the total GDP 42.4 billion Macau Dollars, which is a growth of 12.6% and a net growth of 8.4%. The net growth rates of the first and second season are 8.6% and 8.2% respectively. The steady growing economy is driven mainly by private consumption, fixed assets production and exporting trade and service, which are able to help limit the negative effects brought by the abolishment of textile products export quota in this year. With the stable economic growth, the Price Index of Comprehensive Consumption also experienced a growth of 3.8% during the second season of 2005. Meanwhile, the employment situation keeps improving with the significant drop back on the Unemployment Rate of 4.2%, which is comparable with the last season.
At the beginning of the year, the price of Macau real estate market was so unstable that people couldn’t even have the same price for the short consecutive two days. During May and June 2005, the market was finally into some adjusting period. According to some professionals, if the heating market can somehow cool down at the appropriate time, it can actually prevent real estate bubbles with too many available real estate products turning up at the same time.
The over-heated Macau real estate market was reported frequently in the beginning of this year. According to statistics, in the last season of 2004, the trading price per square meter of the housing units accomplished after the year 2000 witnessed an growth of 70%. Moreover, the houses prices all experienced obvious growth no matter where the location is. During January and April this year, the growing trend was continuously heated up with unbelievable increase on business-based real estate prices.
However, right after May 2005, the heated real estate market gradually cooled down with more rational sellers and more cautious buyers. The trading sharply diminished with the general situation of observation. According to some experts, the market situation is the result of complicated factors. Appropriate adjustment can be helpful for the Macau real estate market.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
