MACAO - Macao's cross-border vehicle traffic rose by 6.2 percent year-on-year to 1.27 million trips in the first quarter of 2019, the special administrative region's statistic service said here on Friday.

The latest report issued from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that the inbound and outbound commercial flights at the Macao International Airport in the first quarter increased by 16.5 percent year-on-year to 17,264 trips.

In March alone, commercial flights totalled 5,927 trips, up by 19.1 percent year-on-year. Trips to and from the Chinese mainland (2,326), Thailand (628) and China's Taiwan region (1,116) showed respective growth of 23.5 percent, 20.3 percent and 4.6 percent.

The DSEC report said that cross-border vehicle traffic grew by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 442,779 trips in March. Vehicular trips passing through the Cotai Strip (128,374) increased by 7.3 percent while those going through the Border Gate (288,256) reduced by 1.6 percent.

In addition, there were 23,025 trips crossing the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, it added.

At the end of the first quarter, the total number of licensed motor vehicles edged down by 0.2 percent year-on-year to 238,725. Light motorcycles (25,309) dropped by 10.2 percent whereas light automobiles (108,083) and heavy motorcycles (97,784) rose by 1.2 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

In the first quarter, new registration of motor vehicles declined by 25.5 percent year-on-year to 3,094. There were 3,184 traffic accidents and 1,090 traffic casualties during the same period.