Real Estate Matters | The Challenges Facing Macau (final part in this 4 part series)

Juliet Risdon is a Director of JML Property and a property investor.
Having established the company in 1994, JML Property offers Investment Property & Homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants.

Macau is facing some serious challenges, and these challenges will almost certainly affect property prices either directly or indirectly.
If Macau is going to prosper in the long term and would like a healthy property market, hard questions have to be asked and hopefully answered.
It’s easy to criticize, so there are also suggestions for potential solutions. Whether they are liked or not will be largely a matter of opinion.
Last week we examined education, and in this final article we look at the other challenges Macau must address.

Hospital and Medical Care
Receiving health care in Macau is perfectly aligned with it’s reputation. It’s a gamble.
Speaking from experience, a person can receive excellent medical care at a subsidized cost that would be difficult to beat in any general hospital worldwide. However, they could also receive treatment that is downright negligent, potentially leading to permanent injury or worse.
The problem is the inconsistency, and the care and attention received will depend largely on the attending nurses, doctor or surgeon.
Talking with people living in Macau, some who grew up here and some who did not, the majority state that they would prefer to receive medical attention in Hong Kong where the diagnosis is trusted and there is faith in the system as well as the individuals.
Is there any reason that Macau is not actively seeking the world’s leading medical facilities? Some say it’s a case of protectionism again, whilst another popular opinion is to do with the way the medical profession is administrated and the lack of openness that the system promulgates.
Again, there is no silver bullet.
As we are aware, medical care is a difficult issue in almost every country both rich and poor.
But perhaps its time to look at successful practices and administration systems elsewhere that create a higher degree of consistency, especially if at least one hospital staffed and operated to international standards is established in Macau against which the others can measured.

Environmental Protection
The size and wealth of Macau make it almost a perfect place to practice ‘green’ initiatives. From the generation of power to the fuelling of cars, from the re-cycling of waste to the awareness of littering, it does not appear to be anywhere near the top of the governmental agenda.
In one small but illustrative example, the trails in Coloane are slowly being widened and resurfaced… with concrete. The last remaining chance that Macau people have of connecting with nature is being taken away.
Once the ‘lungs’ of Macau, Coloane has been targeted for development. The damage being done is growing every day, and will not be reversed.
Can anything be done? Possibly, but it’s unlikely.
Perhaps swapping development land on Coloane for something of similar value on Hengqin. Giving a clear directive to IACM that trails are to be maintained, not developed. On a wider scale, even setting some goals for electric powered vehicles?

All of these elements affect the quality of life, and ultimately whether Macau is an attractive place live or not. If it isn’t attractive, the only thing that will bring people to Macau is money, and that’s simply not sustainable in the long term.
We often hear the phrase ‘Macau for Macau people’. Whether we like it or not, Macau relies heavily on money from outside Macau, a fact that has not gone unnoticed for the past two years especially.

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