The well-intended scheme draws criticism due to ill preparation 

Though the government has injected a hefty sum of MOP29.2 billion into this round of stimulus to drive domestic spending and stabilize the local economy, it has drawn a lot of criticism from the public, with the negative judgments thrown upon the e-voucher scheme being the most pronounced.
“The details regarding how to receive and redeem the e-voucher is far too complicated for a local to fathom. It had taken me a lot of time too to understand,” lawmaker Agnes Lam told the Times yesterday.
With such a convoluted concept, it may be more difficult for the subsidy to trickle into the market, she added.
When asked by the media following the press conference if an individual can receive double benefits if he or she holds two various mobile payment accounts, Tai Kin Ip, director of the Economic and Technological Development Bureau did not respond to the question directly and said: “It depends on the payment behavior of each individual. Some may have one e-payment account and some may have two.”
Lam, who had been offering advice upon the drafting of this round’s relief measures, suspected that the confusion is caused due to the haste to launch the packages.
“The stimulus was launched weeks earlier than planned. The officials might not even ponder about the problem of overlapped subsidy for a person who has more than one mobile payment accounts,” Lam stressed.
“There are many limitations upon the usage of the e-vouchers as well. The scheme favors those who are financially able, instead of those who are scraping by and cannot afford daily expenses in Macau,” the lawmaker added.
She suggests for the government to clarify the details of the e-voucher scheme later and launch targeted relief measures, such as a cash handout, exclusively to the underprivileged groups, who are the unemployed and those who are forced to take no-pay leave.
Nonetheless, she acknowledged that this round succeeds in offering the much-need succor to some target groups, including the tourism and casino sectors, and the elderly.
The stimulus has sparked many negative critiques on social media platforms. Most of them condemned the e-voucher scheme that it has made many perplexed and cannot benefit the impoverished residents.
When asked if the stimulus will help stimulate the city’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) and push the government’s GGR forecast of MOP130 billion for 2021 higher, Secretary for Economy and Finance Lei Wai Nong said that Macau’s gaming business has been on the “growth trajectory,” ever since the resumption of quarantine-free travel between Macau and China in September 2020, but the industry still takes times to recover.
“The government has been evaluating this year’s GGR figure, and we are still working on it,” Lei said, adding that the vaccination scheme is expected to help bolster the GGR tally as well.
“We don’t believe the latest stimulus will impact the GGR at all, [as] we expect that the latest with even more restrictions than the previous [financial measures] will not be redeemable in the casinos,” Ben Lee, managing partner of IGamiX Management & Consulting, told the Times.
The officials also rebutted the rumors that this round of stimulus was released earlier than scheduled to console the public following the protest at the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) by hundreds of construction workers last Friday.
Lei said the government will double down on helping the affected workers to land a job. But he also commented that the budget allocated by the government on public construction projects, involving MOP18.5 billion, is “sufficient” in 2021. However, there are usually different phases that demand different construction professions in each construction project, and this may lead to some some local construction workers staying unemployed. HT