Lawmakers disagree over rental review formula

Some lawmakers are against a proposal that could see property rental reviews go up as much as 29 percent. On Tuesday, the president of the Legislative Assembly’s Third Standing Committee, which is currently undertaking an article-by-article discussion of a law that introduces a rental control mechanism, said that the coefficient to establish rent rates upon review could be three times the legal interest rate. Cheang Chi Keong added that he saw no contradiction between this proposal and the intention of the nine lawmakers who presented the law that got a  first-reading approval in November. That intention was reportedly to establish a cap in order rationalize rental prices in Macau.
However, yesterday two members of the Third Standing Committee dismissed the proposal mentioned by Cheang Chi Keong. According to Gabriel Tong, the link between the rent revision and the legal interest rate was “not well accepted by most of the committee members.”
“I don’t know if it [the proposal] will just be a flawed suggestion. Members think it should be the Chief Executive, as initially established in the law, to establish the rental revision formula,” he said, cited by TDM.
Leonel Alves, who is one of the proponents of the law and also a member of the Third Standing Committee, also told TDM that the rental increase should be determined according to the market situation and also the composite consumer price index (which is currently around four percent).