Kapok | Plus ça change…

Eric Sautedé

When then Premier Wen Jiabao visited Macao in November 2010, he reminded the SAR government that “power [had] to operate under the sun” and that it was duty-bound “to spend more money on livelihood issues”.
Those words sounded like a warning at a time when the discrepancy between public revenue and public spending was gaping: the government was getting richer by the day, and not much was being done in terms of infrastructure, urban development and meaningful public policies for the benefit of the population – think education, healthcare, retirement schemes, transport, lodging, sport facilities, greening of the city, etc.
In the second quarter of 2010, the government had spent only a quarter of what it had pocketed, and piling up resources while designing half-baked policies was the latest fad. “Scientific governance” had just started to bubble up in official speeches, and everybody was thus longing for things to change. Mr Wen had come to Macao to attend the third Ministerial Conference of the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries (PSCs), that had concluded on an upbeat note with the announcement of the establishment of a US$1 billion fund to help Asian and African PSCs in their development drive.
As often happens, high expectations are usually met with disappointment.
In Macao proper, things have barely improved, and we still don’t know whether this is due to the appalling mess left by Mr Ho’s tarnished second mandate or Mr Chui’s ineffective first mandate, but clearly livelihood issues have not been addressed properly: traffic is worse than ever, air pollution has aggravated, economic housing plans and healthcare facilities are still simmering on the back burner, smoking is still allowed in casinos, etc.
And that was not for lack of resources: in 2013, the record year for gambling revenues, the government spent less than 30% of what it had “earned”, and even if the “imbalance” in public finance significantly decreased with the decline in gambling revenue, the government spent a mere 41% of its fiscal revenue in 2014 and despite an adverse situation in 2015, spending only amounted to 70% of the revenue last year and surplus still equated to almost 45% of ordinary spending! No wonder we are in need of a new law on public finance for legislators to be able to more closely monitor the situation.
And yet, one can wonder: are most of the legislators part of the solution or actually part of the problem? Why is it that all these businessmen-turned-public-figures are so much against R&D and innovative investments when it comes to public spending? Could it be because they control land usage, public services and the maintenance of these services? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: Mr Li Keqiang, now Prime minister and visiting Macao for the fifth Ministerial Forum is talking about “people-oriented governance, scientific decision-making and giving priority to the people’s livelihood”…
Diversification, meaning gambling refitted with tourism, entertainment, culture and creative industries, is now the way to go, thanks to the admonition aired by President Xi Jinping when he visited Macao in December 2014, and the cooperation with PSCs appears to be one of the two key pillars, together with the integration of the Pearl River Delta, for this ambition to become a reality. The 19 measures to further cooperation between China and PSCs are thus worthy of careful consideration.
But facts are stubborn things: trade between China and these countries peaked in 2013, and the aim was for these exchanges to reach USD160 billion by 2016, whereas they declined by 26% last year, amounting to less than $100 billion. The $1 billion fund announced by Mr Wen six years ago has received a limited $125 million in capital, and only two projects, one in Angola, the other in Mozambique, have been approved for partial funding.
Having the Fund for Development moved from Beijing to Macao might help, and yet for what purpose and to whose benefit? In Macao, the house always wins!