Secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon said yesterday that Macau and Hengqin will jointly establish a service centre for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries, which is scheduled to start operating in the second half of this year.
The new service centre will operate its main office in the Guangdong-Macau In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin.
Cheong made the remarks during yesterday’s one-day Q&A session in the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) hemicycle about his portfolio’s policy guidelines for next year.
Cheong’s remarks yesterday came after Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai said in his 2025 Policy Address on Monday that with the aim of fully leveraging its long-standing role as a service platform for cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, his government is committed to also strengthening and promoting exchanges and cooperation between China and Spanish-speaking countries in various fields.
Moreover, during a meeting with Vice-Foreign Minister Hua Chunying in Macau last month, Sam pledged that his government will enhance and expand Macau’s external connections, particularly by exploring markets in Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries as well as in Southeast Asia.
During yesterday’s Q&A session, Cheong said that with the aim of fully leveraging its role as a service platform for cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, Macau and Hengqin will jointly establish the China and Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking Countries Economic and Trade Service Centre.
Cheong said that the new service centre will provide enterprises from China and Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries with a comprehensive set of services, in a combination of online and offline channels, covering language, legal, taxation, compliance, personnel training, arbitration and mediation services, with the aim of fostering economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries.
Cheong said that the new service centre is scheduled to start operating in the second half of this year.
Spanish is spoken by about 450 million people. It has official status in 20 countries. It is the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin, and the world’s fourth-most spoken language overall after Mandarin, English and Hindi-Urdu.
Portuguese is spoken by about 250 million people. It has official status in nine countries. It is the world’s seventh-most spoken native language, after languages including Arabic and Bengali.
Nearly nine percent of the world’s eight billion people have Spanish or Portuguese as their mother tongue. About one-quarter of the world population speaks Mandarin, Spanish or Portuguese.
Macau has been committed to developing itself into a service platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries since the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries, known as Forum Macao for short, was launched in October 2003 in Macau, with its Permanent Secretariat established here in 2004.
Forum Macao’s Permanent Secretariat is headquartered in Macau.
During yesterday’s Q&A session, Cheong stressed that the functions and tasks of the new service centre will not overlap those of Forum Macao. He stressed that the new service centre will be an organisation operated with corporate-style management dedicated to primarily providing various types of services, which will be jointly run by the Macau government and the in-depth cooperation zone’s executive committee.
While the zone’s management committee is its top decision-making body jointly administered by Guangdong Province and the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR), running under a dual director system jointly led by the governor of Guangdong Province and the chief executive of the MSAR, the zone’s executive committee, which is run under the management committee, is the body tasked with the zone’s daily functioning and execution of tasks.
Cheong said that the Macau government and the zone’s executive committee have hired a consultancy to design the new service centre’s organisational and operational structure, adding that local professionals in the legal, accounting and Portuguese translation fields are welcome to join the new service centre’s operation.
Cheong said that Macau has a relatively large number of professionals familiar with the legal and taxation systems in Portuguese-speaking countries, while Hengqin enjoys a more direct link with the mainland market thereby having advantages in serving enterprises from the mainland. Consequently, he said, the new service centre can leverage the synergetic effects created by collaboration between Macau and Hengqin.
Single feedback platform
Meanwhile, Cheong acknowledged during yesterday’s Q&A session that the current public feedback systems run by different public entities do not function well in responding to opinions and complaints from residents. Consequently, he said, the government will set up a single and simple platform for residents to raise opinions and complaints related to all government entities.
Cheong said that the local government has designed the modus operandi of the new platform after referencing the design of the mainland’s government service hotline 12345. He said that the new platform will be operated by the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP) with the applications of big data models and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with the aim of being able to sort out enquiries, opinions and complaints from residents in a short time and transfer them to the respective public entities.
Hac Sa adventure camp to cost up to 600 million patacas
Meanwhile, Cheong also revealed yesterday that the government’s youth adventure camp project near Coloane’s Hac Sa Beach is now budgeted at 500 to 600 million patacas after improving and revising the project’s design.
When the government announced the large-scale youth adventure camp project in 2023, it said that the project was slated to cost up to 1.4 billion patacas.
Cheong said yesterday that after further studying opinions from community associations and professional associations, the government has made amendments to the project’s design in terms of different aspects such as its architectural and structural designs as well as construction techniques and methods, on the premise of ensuring the project’s quality and construction standards and adhering to the cost-effectiveness principle.
Cheong also said that the government is now aiming to launch a tender later this quarter for the project’s first phase, which is scheduled to be completed in the second half of next year. He said that the government is aiming for the whole camp to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2027.
Secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon gestures while addressing yesterday’s Q&A session about his portfolio’s 2025 policy guidelines in the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) hemicycle. – Photo courtesy of TDM
