Lawmakers criticize delay and detail of budget amendment

Several lawmakers also criticized the lack of time provided to analyze the bill and the limited detail on information provided by the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lei Wai Nong. Lei came under fire by some lawmakers and was accused of abusing the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) urgency law approval method to approve, with little discussion, matters of vital importance for society, and which involve the spending of billions of patacas from the public money reserves.

According to several lawmakers, the bill lacked detail and explanation of where the added budget will be applied and how. The lack of time and information given to the lawmakers before the discussion in a special videoconference plenary session was also condemned.

Among those voicing more criticism was Ron Lam, who expressed discontent from the start regarding the lack of time and information provided, claiming to have directed questions to the office of the Secretary when the bill was received by the AL, without a response.

Pereira Coutinho made similar remarks, accusing Lei of abusing the urgency method for the approval of the amendment to rush in an approval without providing explanations.

Usually more aligned with the government, Nick Lei Leong Wong also expressed his disagreement with the attitude of the government, citing several examples from the bill in which “lawmakers can only speculate about what this money will be for.”

“We see that there is some additional budget attributed to several departments such as the Health Bureau (SSM) and the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM). In the SSM case, we see there are some 600 million patacas more, which are attributed to pandemic prevention materials and equipment, and the like. But there are another 300 million patacas here and I don’t know what they are for. Since this amendment bill is to be done via a method of urgency, I think the government should at least better detail the expenses,” Nick Lei said. He added, “For IAM, it is the same. There are some 200 million patacas that are not explained. This is probably for the supply of food and other essentials for the people in the red zones [of confinement] but in reality, this is just my assumption. We don’t know for sure.”

Che also said several dubious figures were presented and it was difficult even for him to understand the total amount that the government wanted the lawmakers to approve.

During the first part of the session, two lawmakers, including Pereira Coutinho, voted against the discussion of the bill as a matter of urgency and another abstained from voting.

Despite the heavy criticism, lawmakers passed the bill, which now provides approval for another 35.1 billion patacas to be used by the government. Lei explained that a large part of this amount (14.6 million patacas) is simply to fill the gap created in the public coffers related to the receipt of gaming taxes for the period between January and July. This gap comes from the government’s overestimation that in 2022, gaming taxes would generate revenue of at least 130 billion patacas, while, as the Times reported, in the first half of this year, the amount accumulated was just 26.3 billion patacas.