Macao Foundation’s support drops 44% in Q1

The Macao Foundation (FM) has spent 83.4 million patacas less in the provision of financial support to associations, institutions, and people in Macau, in the first three months of this year (Q1) than in the same period last year, the official report published on the government’s official gazette has stated. This sum represents a year-on-year drop of 43.7%.
This year, the government fund paid only 107.6 million patacas in financial support to sponsored activities, a figure that contrasts even more when compared with the last quarter of 2020, when the FM spent a total of 290.5 million patacas in the provision of financially supported activities.
In Q1 of 2021, the largest sum was attributed to the Macao Science Center, with a total of 44,750,000 patacas referable to the first installment for this year’s operating expenses.
Large sums were also spent on the second installment of special merit scholarships from the 2020/2021 academic year (18.8 million patacas related to 153 scholarships) and on the payment of the subsidy for the participation of local race drivers in racing events outside Macau in 2020 (8.2 million patacas spent on 36 drivers).
In terms of single attributions, the second largest slice, after the science center, was for the Foundation of the Macau Portuguese School, which received 4 million patacas as financial support related to the first installment of the school’s annual plan from the academic year 2019/2020 and for Animal welfare organization ANIMA, which received 2.5 million patacas as the first installment of financial support to go towards operation expenses.