The focus on a financial market dedicated to the issuance of debt securities and the traditional Chinese medicine industry are Macau’s priorities to depend less on gambling revenues, officials said today.
“Boosting financial development, particularly in the intensification of the issuance of debt securities” and “intensely developing the traditional Chinese medicine industry” were priorities defined by the head of the Government, at the last meeting in Hainão, within the scope of the summit of leaders from nine provinces Chinese, Macau and Hong Kong.
In the several meetings held this week, Ho Iat Seng has affirmed the importance of the territory in diversifying the economy, a need that has become more evident with the tourist and gambling crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
“The epidemic exposed the shortcomings of Macao’s unique industry, which is why he said he considered it necessary to boost the development of economic diversification,” reads a statement from the authorities in which the chief executive met with the provincial governor of Jiangxi, an idea reiterated on Thursday with the governor of Fujian.
Macau has assumed the will to proceed with a stock exchange and the authorities have stressed that the issuance of State debt securities constitutes a new starting point for the development of wealth management activities in Macau.
The possibility of Macau creating a stock exchange is also in line with the role that the territory has assumed as a service platform for trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, as well as for the provision of financial services between Beijing and the Lusophone block.
If in October, the Bank of China in Macau carried out ‘green’ bond issues worth seven billion yuan (850 million euros) in three currencies (dollar, euro and renmimbi) “which included Portuguese-speaking customers,” he told the Lusa the institution, now the same bank issued 3.5 billion ‘blue’ bonds.
In the case of ‘green’ bonds, the issuance of debt securities serves to finance ‘environment friendly’ projects, ‘blue’ are to develop the maritime economy.
As for the other priority defined by Ho Iat Seng, Macau already has a Scientific and Industrial Park for Traditional Chinese Medicine, one of the projects located on the island of Hengqin, and this is Beijing’s bet to conquer international markets.
The ‘export’ strategy of Traditional Chinese Medicine to Portuguese-speaking countries, also using Portugal as a gateway to Europe, has, moreover, been one of the central axes of action for 2019 by the Macau authorities.
The Pearl River Pan-Delta leaders’ meeting is a regional cooperation platform created in 2004, which integrates the governments of nine provinces (Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Haino, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan) and two special Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macau (9 + 2).
