Insight: When things aren’t what they seem

Paulo Barbosa

1. Álvaro Santos Pereira, a former Portuguese economy minister who now works for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), recently published a book about his experience as a governor.
The controversy surrounding his book relates to his confessed dislike of one of the top ministers in the current government (Paulo Portas, a Macau regular). Besides petty politics, the other issue that has generated media attention is the former minister’s confession that he did not believe in the official statistics that basically indicated an improvement in Portugal’s overall general situation and a decrease in the unemployment rate. As he did not believe that those official statistics reflected reality, he produced his own estimates, which he used to establish policies.
I thought about Álvaro Santos Pereira when I saw the news agencies’ headlines about the annual economic rankings of 300 cities worldwide, as produced by the Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase: “Macau ranks No. 1 in economic performance among world cities” read the title from Associated Press. “Macau, the Chinese territory known for casino gambling, outperformed the rest of the world’s major cities economically last year,” according to the article’s lead.
The US-made study meant very good press for Macau, especially for those who have read about the region but have never been here. Macau, that unknown place, must be heaven on earth, they probably thought.
If you believe in the “Álvaro Santos Pereira school of economics,” you will seriously doubt the report’s conclusions, which are based on the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth and the employment growth.
The study tells those who live here something they already know: there’s a lot of money being made in Macau. The problem, we also know, is in the way that it is distributed. There isn’t much reliable data available to assess the latter aspect, but statistics buffs will appreciate knowing that research conducted by the Macau Economic Association concluded that the income gap between the rich and poor has widened, despite the booming local economy. The research indicates that the Gini coefficient (used to measure wealth inequality and ranging from zero to one, where zero expresses perfect equality) increased to about 0.4 in 2011, approaching the international warning level.
There are other indicators that must be considered when measuring the effects of the region’s reported “top economic performance.” For example, the real-estate boom is pushing flat prices to values beyond the reach of the average local family. The “economic performance” is also expected to result in the population swelling to 700,000 by 2016. So, things are not as they seem when we read a newspaper title which claims that Macau outperforms all the other cities in the world. We must consider, to a certain extent, whether the economic performance is benefiting or hitting the locals. Given the complexity of the issues involved, I guess both are true.

2. Another complex issue in Macau is that of human resources, with several lawmakers calling for a ban (or almost) on the importation of workers, and many companies facing increasing difficulties in hiring workers while avoiding a high employee turnover rate. Here’s an idea to solve the issue: it was reported that Japan will open a hotel that will be staffed by robots. Named Henn-na Hotel (‘Strange hotel’), the establishment will open in July and will have 72 rooms available on its first phase.
“The Japanese hospitality industry will be replaced by “actroids” (robots with strong human likeness) that will act as receptionists. They will also have the capability of responding with intelligent conversation to human guests. Services like porters and other engaging menial tasks like cleaning will be done by robots,” reported the Travel and Tour World. Here’s an idea for the likes of Kwan Tsui Hang, Song Pek Kei and other local lawmakers.
Dear reader; in this constant state of confusion, can you tell if I’m joking or not?