The Social Welfare Bureau (IAS) has announced that the application period for the government’s newly launched childcare allowance will start on Wednesday next week.
The bureau, the public entity implementing the childcare allowance programme, made the announcement in a statement on Friday.
The new childcare allowance launched on a provisional basis will cover permanent local residents under the age of three born in or before 2027. Each beneficiary will receive an annual allowance of 18,000 patacas for up to three years.
After Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai announced the government’s plan to launch the childcare allowance in his 2025 Policy Address delivered in April, the government announced details of the allowance during a press conference early last month, after which the newly drawn-up administrative regulation (by-law) on the issuance of the childcare allowance was promulgated in the Official Gazette (BO) about one week later.
The administrative regulation, which was gazetted on June 9, will take effect on Tuesday next week.
According to the regulation, only parents whose children are permanent local residents will be entitled to receive the allowance.
Friday’s statement noted that according to the regulation, the programme covers children born in 2025, 2026 or 2027, where parents will be entitled to receive a yearly allowance of 18,000 patacas, to be issued once a year, for three years, namely 18,000 patacas for the year of their children’s birth and 18,000 patacas for each of the two subsequent years.
Parents can submit their applications via the Macao One Account’s e-government app. The applications can be made by either of the newborn’s parents.
According to the administrative regulation, parents whose children are born in a particular year will be required to submit their applications by June 30 of the subsequent year at the latest. The allowance will be paid to the beneficiaries via bank transfer.
Friday’s IAS statement said that in consideration of the need to also financially support parents whose children were born before 2025, the allowance, according to the regulation, will also cover children who were born in 2022, 2023 or 2024.
The statement noted that according to the regulation, parents whose children were born in 2022 will be entitled to receive the allowance for one year, while those whose children were born in 2023 will be entitled to receive the allowance for two years. Those whose children were born in 2024 will also be entitled to receive the allowance for three years, the same as children born in 2025, 2026 or 2027, according to the regulation.
Friday’s statement announced that the childcare allowance’s application period for children born in 2025 as well as those born in 2022, 2023 or 2024 will start on Wednesday next week, i.e., the day after the administrative regulation takes effect. The statement noted that their parents will be required to submit their applications by June 30 next year.
The statement said that the upcoming application period for the childcare allowance is expected to cover around 15,000 children, i.e., the total number of those born in 2022, 2023 and 2024 plus the expected number of those born this year.
The statement noted that the parents will receive the allowance via bank transfer within 60 days after their respective applications are approved.
This infographic in Portuguese released by the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS) on Friday shows the number of years for which children born between 2022 and 2027 are eligible for the government’s childcare allowance.
