Secretary bids for approval of Urban Master Plan this year, detailed plans soon

Lam Hin San (left) and Raimundo do Rosário

The government is bidding for the approval of the Urban Master Plan to take place by the end of this year, promising to move forward promptly with the detailed plans for the project, the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, said yesterday afternoon at the Legislative Assembly (AL).
Replying to an inquiry from lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong, Rosário said, “By the end of this year we will have the [Urban Master] Plan finalized and ready to be approved. We will do everything in our capacity to have it approved within this year,” adding, “After that, we will work immediately on the detail plans.”
Ng asked about the specific plans from the government in terms of the proportionality and location of the various types of housing, which is a piece of information that according to the Secretary, is not yet possible to clarify.
“Macau is divided into 18 areas and I can’t tell when we will have all the detailed plans to all these areas ready. I can only say we will be working on them as soon as the Master Plan is approved,” the Secretary explained.
According to Rosário, the Urban Master Plan is divided into eight different parts, and housing is only one element. He further noted that there is no identifying which type of housing will be allowed or prohibited in each area.
“We have no details on what areas [land plots] are going to be for private or public [development]. We don’t have this division or classification,” he clarified.
Primarily addressing the plans, which include the development of five land plots in the Zone A of the new landfills and Avenida Wai Long, Rosário said, “We are planning in total 32,000 new housing units from which 28,000 will be of public housing and, from these, 24,000 will be dedicated to economic renting. For Avenida Wai Long, we will have between 4,000 to 6,000 units, all for public housing.”

Efforts concentrated on Zone A
Replying to a question from lawmakers Ng and Ella Lei, the Secretary admitted that the government’s priorities in relation to the construction of public housing are in Zone A of the new landfills, as well as the land plot of the Avenida Wai Long in Taipa.
“We are concentrating all our efforts on Zone A [of the new landfills] where we are planning to build from next year 24,000 [public] housing units,” he said. He added that in addition to the planned units at the Avenida Wai Long, the government will achieve the goal of building around 30,000 public housing units, a figure that according to Rosário, “will account for the most important part of the needs.”
“We want to move forward with Zone A and Wai Long. But we need time. Even accelerating … the [whole] process, we will still need a couple of years to achieve this [goal],” he said.
He noted that the government only expects that it will have a clear picture in terms of the distribution of the types of housing units on the land plots by 2024.
“We will start developing five land plots [from Zone A] this year,” he said.