The Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) announced in a statement yesterday that the sole wet market on Coloane island, Coloane Market, will close for good on December 16, as the market’s last two remaining stalls have been closed by their operators recently.
Consequently, the statement noted, no stalls are currently operating in the market.
According to the statement, the bureau has started studying the possibility of revitalising the market building, located in Coloane Village, after its upcoming closure, in line with the island’s overall planning and development.
Currently, the city has a total of nine wet markets, comprising seven in the Macau peninsula, one in Taipa island, and one in Coloane.
The Municipal Affairs Bureau oversees the operations of the city’s wet markets.
Coloane Market is located at the junction of Estrada do Campo (田畔街) and Largo do Presidente António Ramalho Eanes (恩尼斯總統前地) in Coloane Village. The current wet-market building reportedly started operating in 1941, which replaced the original wet market, which was situated nearby and had opened in 1893.
Yesterday’s IAM statement noted that a chief executive order published in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday, which will take effect on December 16, no longer lists Coloane Market as one of the city’s wet markets.
The new list published yesterday consists of eight wet markets comprising seven in the Macau peninsula and one in Taipa, namely (by order listed in yesterday’s chief executive order) Bairro Iao Hon Market, Almirante Lacerda Market (aka Red Market), S. Domingos Market, S. Lourenço Market, Patane Market, Horta da Mitra Market, Tamagnini Barbosa Market, and Taipa Market.
“Bairro” means “neighbourhood” in Portuguese.
Tamagnini Barbosa district in northern peninsula is known as Toi San in Cantonese.
The government has been carrying out a campaign aiming to revitalise the operations of the city’s wet markets, by various measures such as renovating the Red Market and Horta da Mitra Market, as well as new legislation aiming to strengthen the regulation of the city’s wet-market stalls, i.e., the current wet-market law which took effect on January 1, 2022 after its passage by the legislature in its final reading in June 2021.
The revamped Red Market reopened in late May this year after it had been closed for over two years for renovation.
The renovated Horta da Mitra Market reopened in January this year after its renovation started in March last year.
Yesterday’s IAM statement said that over the past few months, Coloane Market’s last two remaining vendors, selling fruit and vegetables, had decided to stop their business and returned their stalls to the bureau, because of which, the statement noted, no stalls are currently operating in the wet-market building.
The statement said that the bureau will close Coloane Market for good on December 16.
The statement said that the bureau has decided to launch a study on the possibility of revitalising the wet market building in line with Coloane’s overall planning and development, after considering the island’s latest development, the distribution of retail units supplying fresh food in the area, the operations of Coloane Market over recent years, and opinions gathered from residents living on the island.
The statement said that with Coloane’s ongoing development, the number of shoppers in Coloane Market had been constantly decreasing over the past few years due to different reasons such as the changes in Coloane Village’s demographic structure and residents’ changes in consumption habits and patterns.
The statement underlined that the bureau will announce details of its plan to revitalise the market building in due course.
This undated handout photo released by the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) yesterday shows Coloane Market in Coloane Village.
