Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah has foreseen the Special Administrative Region's gross domestic product to grow between 5 percent and 6 percent in 2002 -- depending on the export figure for the fourth quarter -- as well as another 4 percent increase for the coming year.

In his policy address for 2003, he said it is hard for all the industries to expand simultaneously in Macao, but the tourism and gambling industry will definitely have an even brighter future.

"We should upgrade necessary rules and regulations, strengthen supervision and train talents in an effort to make the gaming industry more competitive," he noted.

According to the latest statistics, Macao played host to 10.46 million tourists in the first 11 months of the year, outnumbering the whole year of 2001, buoyed by the huge influx of China's inlanders.

Hong Kong remained the largest tourist source for Macao, bringing in 4.68 million visitors, but the figure dipped a 1.5 percent per annum. China's inland was catching up quickly, with tourists from there now making up 36 percent of the total for the city. And Taiwan tourists ranked the third place in number, reaching 13.6 percent of the total.

Tourists to the SAR hit for the first time a record of more than ten million in 2001.

Industry insiders noted that the city's tourism industry has benefited greatly from a sharp rise of travel agencies allowed by the China National Tourism Administration to manage the SAR-bound tours.

At present, the Macao Government Tourist Office is seeking to make tourists stay longer and spend more as the number of same-dayvisitors still reached 43.1 percent of the total in the 11-month period.

Since the gaming industry was officially liberalized in April, the three new casino license winners have been seeking to start orexpand business in Macao. A few temporary casinos are now being built.

The SAR government raked in more than 6 billion patacas (750 million US dollars) in gaming tax in the first nine months of the year, up 10 percent per annum.

And the figure for the whole year is estimated at 7 billion patacas (875 million dollars), jumping 25 percent from the original target.

An opener Macao has attracted more overseas investors. In the first three quarters, a total of 880 new companies were set up, representing a rise of as much as 40 percent on an annual basis, figures show.

Real estate, another engine for Macao's economy, has climbed into embryonic recovery after years of doldrums. The Statistics and Census Services has projected that a total of 14,540 property contracts were clinched in the first three quarters of the year, surging 56.1 percent on a yearly basis, amid local residents' stronger interest in house buying.

And the combined value for the deals also jumped 26.5 percent to 8.49 billion patacas (1.06 billion dollars).

Macao's real estate industry has plunged into doldrums since 1993 following a boom earlier in the 1990s and at present, vacant houses can still accommodate roughly 200,000 residents, an equivalent to close to half of the city's population.

The prime time for the sector came in 1987 in the wake of the signing of the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration, which set the tune for Macao's future and boosted investors' confidence, resulting in huge amounts of foreign investment pouring into the city and shooting-up house prices.

According to government sources, the SAR's foreign currency reserves have been on the increase quarter on quarter, reaching 3.8 billion dollars by the end of September, up nearly 40 percent from three years ago when Macao returned to the motherland.

Chief Executive Edmund Ho has noted that greater efforts will be exerted in the coming year to cement the role of tourism and gambling industry as the "dragonhead" for Macao's economy.

In the meantime, he said new policies will be issued to supportthe development of local small and medium-sized enterprises and the construction of public projects will be accelerated in an effort to give another impetus to the economy and lower the jobless rate, which has long been perching above 6 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2002)