Legislative Assembly | Gov’t plans regulations to watch public companies’ finances

Chan Chak Mo (right)

The government has revealed to lawmakers that it has plans to establish new regulations to monitor public companies’ financial situations, according to lawmaker Chan Chak Mo.

Yesterday, the Second Standing Committee of the Legislative Assembly (AL) discussed the enforcement of the government budget for 2019.

The committee members signed their opinions on said enforcement.

After yesterday’s discussion was completed, Chan, together with Wong Kit Cheng, reported the proceedings to the media.

According to Chan, the government has already submitted the accounts and reports of four of the city’s government wholly-owned companies to the committee.

These four companies are: Macau Investment and Development Limited, Transferência Electrónica de Dados – Macau Edi Van S.A. (TEDMEV), TDM- Teledifusão de Macau, S.A., and the Macao Industrial Parks Development Co., Ltd.

Although the government submitted financial reports concerning its wholly-owned companies, the accounts of other companies in which the SAR government is an investor were not submitted.

In total, there are nine public companies in which the government has invested.

According to Chan’s explanation, all issues concerning these nine companies must be voted upon and passed at the board of the company, on the basis of Macau’s business laws and regulations. As such, the government did not submit the accounts.

In addition, as reported by Chan, the committee members expressed their opinions regarding the company’s accounts. Some members consider the documents of these companies that are available to the lawmakers to be insufficient.

The lawmakers believe that under the conditions of low transparency, it is difficult for them and for the public to watch the operations conducted by these companies.

The committee believes that transparency concerning the companies’ information needs to be reviewed.

In response to the lawmakers, government representatives promised to establish an internal instruction to regulate the financial situation of companies where public capital was invested, as well as to increase the transparency for the convenience of supervision by society and the AL.

However, the government did not provide a timetable for the establishment of this instruction.

The government also expressed that it will research the establishment of specific laws and regulations to regulate financial arrangements and reports of the financial situations of public-funded companies.