Lawmakers probe gov’t on budget defiance to Basic Law

Lawmakers of the First Standing Committee of the Legislative Assembly (AL) have questioned the government regarding the 2021 budget bill, which presents a deficit due to greater expenditure than revenue forecast for next year.
This is despite the bill being approved without any opposition upon its first reading last week.
In the bill, the government has proposed to allocate 26.6 billion patacas from the financial reserve to address the public administration deficit.
The lawmakers in question realized that this does not comply with Article 105 of the Macau Basic Law, which states that the SAR government, “shall follow the principle of keeping expenditure within the limits of the revenues in drawing up its budget, and strive to achieve a fiscal balance, avoid deficits and keep the budget commensurate with the growth rate of its gross domestic product,” Chairman of the Committee, Ho Ion Sang noted during a press briefing after yesterday’s meeting on the topic.
To the media, Ho said, “This is a deficit budget and according to the justification note from the government, they only said that they are aiming to keep expenditure as low as possible but they do not justify the reasons why this is a deficit budget [and why it is not possible to present one that is not]. We hope that in the next meeting, the government can further explain the reasons and clarify what they are doing to balance the accounts and keep the expenditure as low as possible,” he said. This would require the government “to move a lot of money from the reserve and they should also better explain how this is going to be done,” he said.
Compliance with the Basic Law has not been questioned before, despite this not being the first time that the government presented a budget deficit to the AL. Ho told the media, citing 2020 as an example, that the situation is different now.
“When it was drawn up, the budget for 2020 was not expecting a deficit; this only happened later and due to […] the Covid-19 pandemic. This is why we had to [make] two amendments to the original version of that budget, to justify the allocation of money from the [financial] reserve,” he explained, stating that for next year, the deficit is presented from the start. “So we need to pay more attention to this matter and ensure that the government is doing everything possible to achieve the balance [between expenditure and revenue],” Ho added.
But this is not the only issue with the 2021 budget bill, as the committee chairman explained during yesterday’s session. Lawmakers presented a list of questions and requests for clarification to the government on several matters and regarding the figures presented by the executive, including the expected shrinking of the collection of Professional Tax by 24%.
“We need to ask how they reached this reduction and also what kind of companies and people are being held accountable for such a reduction,” Ho remarked, noting once more that the first version approved upon first reading was unclear and lacked justifications or explanations for most of the figures presented.
Ho also noted that the gross gaming revenue figure presented was 130 billion patacas, a forecast that, at the time of the first reading, was considered by many to be overly optimistic.
According to Ho, a meeting with the government should take place late next week, when the committee expects to see replies to the list of questions raised.
“We are meeting with the government late next week after the Policy Address presentation by the Chief Executive. We hope they can reply to the list of questions we [presented] today, as we need to have this work concluded by mid-December, as it happens every year. This is always our goal,” Ho said.