Sam Hou Fai to study feasibility of new round of consumption vouchers

The sole candidate for the upcoming election for the Macau chief executive post, Sam Hou-fai, the city’s former top judge, waves as he leaves the stage after a press conference SaturdayChief Executive candidate Sam Hou Fai has pledged to evaluate the continuation of consumption vouchers if elected, planning to collaborate with the new-term SAR government team to assess feasibility and explore potential issuance methods.

During Sam’s policy platform presentation earlier today (Saturday), Lo Choi In, lawmaker and a member of the Election Committee, expressed hopes that the new administration would maintain city-wide concessions and distribute consumption vouchers to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In his response, Sam emphasized that during the three years of the SARS outbreak, the current government had bolstered community spending power and ensured social stability through the distribution of consumption vouchers and other pandemic-related measures, amounting to approximately MOP160 billion.

He noted that the tourism and gaming sectors have shown a rapid recovery, with visitor arrivals from January to August 2024 surpassing 23 million. In August alone, arrivals reached 3.65 million, exceeding figures from the same period in 2019 by 0.8%.

“The current government has implemented consumer reward initiatives to attract spending from tourists and support SMEs.” He reiterated his commitment to carefully study the potential for future consumption vouchers with his team.

Earlier this week, Lo recalled that Macau’s economy has shown signs of recovery since the pandemic, but warned that this rebound is uneven across various sectors, highlighting that many residents are struggling financially, particularly those in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Lo pointed out that a decline in private consumption and a drop in consumer numbers have negatively impacted all sectors, including SMEs.

“The private consumption market has been declining and falling. We’ve seen all sectors, including SMEs, struggling to do business, so I’ve been pushing the government over the past session to come up with ways, effective measures, to revitalize the economy and help our SMEs,” Lo recently told the press.

*Updating story. Full coverage in Monday’s newspaper.