The president of the Commercial Association of Macau told Lusa that he hopes that the Government will facilitate “without delay” the process of hiring non-resident workers, on an occasion of recovery in the tourism sector.
“The Directorate of Services for Labor Affairs [DSAL] is expected to make the quotas for non-resident workers more flexible without delay, so that businessmen can take advantage of the opportunities arising from the recovery of the tourism sector,” the president of the association told Lusa. Macau Commercial Association, Frederico Ma Chi Ngai.
The strict ‘zero covid’ policy adopted during the pandemic by Macau, as in China, had a severe impact on the territory’s economy. Official data indicate a loss of 41,626 thousand non-resident workers between December 2019 and December 2022.
In a response sent by email to Lusa, Ma Chi Ngai lamented the “long shortage of manpower”, citing data from DSAL which show that “the number of non-resident workers hired in February was just 699 more” than at the end of January (2,335 more than the previous month).
Earlier, the vice-president of the Macau Hotel Association, Rutger Verschuren, had told Lusa that the territory’s hotel units are not yet operating at 100%, with a lack of employees “in operational departments, such as cleaning or food and drinks”.
“In addition to having employees working overtime,” he noted.
With regard to the Easter holiday period, the Commercial Association of Macau, a body made up of local businessmen and close to the Government, welcomed “the impressive influx of visitors” to the territory, which was due to “the proactive and effective planning of advertising campaigns from the government”.
Data released by the Public Security Police Corps indicate that, between April 5 and 10, 481,765 visitors entered Macau, a figure higher than that of the Lunar New Year week (451,000 people), the main Chinese festival, this year between 22 and January 28th.
But despite the “very good” results, Ma noted that visitors are coming “mainly from Hong Kong and mainland China”.
“We need to observe the proportion of foreign visitors in the future”, he considered.
Following the opening of Macau, after the covid-19 pandemic, the Government proposed to diversify the local economy and tourism, which are deeply dependent on gambling, even requiring operators operating casinos to bet on non-gambling elements and on other visitor markets besides mainland China.
The president of the Commercial Association also suggested that the airport in the territory, “in addition to increasing the number of routes”, could also “study how to make use of the complementary capacity of airports in Hong Kong and neighboring regions to increase the capacity of Macau”.
This is so that the neighboring Chinese province of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau can “bake a bigger cake and promote a mutually beneficial partnership”, he said.
