Logistics association criticizes gov’t for lack of development blueprint

Victor Lei

When the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (Delta Bridge) is completed in 2016, the project is expected to bring new economic opportunities to Macau and to benefit different sectors, including the logistics industry. However, Victor Lei, president of the International Logistics and Forwarding Association of Macau (ILFAM), thinks that the Macau government “may have forgotten” about his sector by failing to provide a plan for the future development of the logistics industry. He enumerates some of the challenges the sector is currently facing, including the lack of human resources and hardware.
In an exclusive interview with the Times, Mr Lei said that the local logistics industry is flourishing. Although the volume of exports in Macau has decreased, the amount of imported goods has risen and importation has become more frequent.
The recent downturn in Macau’s gaming revenue does not pose a serious threat to the logistics sector, Mr Lei believes. In fact, he considers that new business opportunities will continue to arise. “I can’t see any negative impact. With more construction work, including resorts, reaching completion in the future, [resort operators] would want to attract customers and this requires material support for storage and integrated logistics support (ILS). There are hence more business opportunities to be had,” he said.
However, Mr Lei said that whether or not these opportunities can be executed depends on the government’s ability to plan. In fact, he pointed out that there is no specialized professional task group within the administration to oversee the development of the logistics industry. “We feel disappointed, and neglected. Of course, after our continuous plea for almost a decade, there is finally the Committee for the Development of Logistics Sector (CDLS),” he said. “However, what [the Committee] focuses on is the current operation. What about the future?”
Victor Lei is especially dissatisfied with the component of the Urban Planning Committee. While he believes that this committee plays a significant role in shaping the future urban landscape of Macau, he also said that it does not include any representatives from the logistics industry. “I believe that the government did not do it intentionally, but it just forgot [about the logistics industry],” he said. The fact that the logistics industry is underrepresented even in the CDLS is also unsettling for the ILFAM president.
When it comes to the challenges that the local logistics sector is facing, Victor Lei has named the lack of human resources and hardware as the main problems the sector has to tackle.
Mr Lei revealed that the Federal General Commercial Association of Macau Small and Medium Enterprises, of which he is a vice-chairman, is preparing to collaborate with a university to conduct research on Macau’s labor market, focusing on commercial drivers. “We hope that we can hand the data over to the government so that officials can publish the results… I don’t understand why our friends from the labor sector are still blindly opposing the importing of non-resident drivers that can support our industry,” he said.
The ILFAM president stated that while some from the labor sector suggested that employers can attract drivers through offering a higher wage, he said that the offers from local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) simply cannot compete with multinational corporations. If the SMEs have to increase salaries, they would eventually have to pass on the extra cost to the consumers.
Apart from the human resources issue, Mr Lei also pointed out that Macau lacks the hardware to facilitate the further development of the logistics industry. “Macau, as a city with high domestic demand, requires materials to be transported into the city from overseas. Although we have the goods, we don’t have the place to store them,” he explained. He added that even though there are many vacant factory buildings, the design of these units is not suitable for storage.
He again questioned whether or not urban planning authorities have considered these issues at all. “Don’t always focus on public housing. When those public housing units are built, there are still a lot of problems if people have to wait for the [household goods] to be transported to Macau from Hong Kong and the mainland… Does anybody in the government think about this? Have the officials forgotten; do they deliberately leave it out; or they just don’t understand it at all?”