Empty shops, offices without clients, cascading bankruptcies, bad credit? Doesn’t the government see this? It does; what it doesn’t do is subsidize consumption, rent, debt… artificially sustaining what the universe wants to bury. But you can do a lot, as companies can, and each of us can. In the end, without sustainability and growth, social and political harmony dies.
In Europe, solidarity mechanisms distributed lost funds, subsidized credit, and public investment, leveraging new business areas. Above all, there was a focus on professional retraining and multilingual, multifaceted, and multifunctional service companies. Even so, today’s technological vertigo demands renewed retraining processes.
Macau has to go that way; there’s no room for agriculture and industry, even considering Hengqin. Quickly, and forcefully, there is an urgent need to review curricula – from pre-primary to universities – but also intensive professional retraining processes for generations addicted to commerce and palatial rent-seeking. Obviously, you also need to import know-how and investment capital. Because, in the short term, almost everything is lacking.
Done seriously; with plans, objectives, and evaluation of results, it takes at least a generation. Now, if you don’t even get started, you won’t get anywhere.
The global economy has no borders. The most childish illusion of regional phobia is thinking that companies don’t set up back offices on the other side; that continental capital, companies, and know-how aren’t arriving. Ask architecture studios if they win any projects from the construction sharks; ask your neighbor where he takes his family to dinner, where he shops, which supermarket he goes to, where he fills up his gas tank.
Regional integration brings dramas of competitiveness; even of identity; but also opportunities in a market of 85 million consumers and 14% of China’s GDP. The Lusophone platform is not a windfall of profitability, but it empowers a service society that qualifies for new job profiles. It is possible; in fact, mandatory, to find these niche opportunities. Done seriously; With plans, objectives, and results evaluation, it takes at least a generation. Now, if you don’t even get started, you won’t get anywhere.
In Portugal, for example, it is estimated that 30% of current jobs will be swallowed up by Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence – in half a dozen years. The problem is global; in Macau, the specificity lies in the political and cultural blockade against the evidence. But there are also golden assets: a gaming surplus, regional integration, strategic management of a brutal power… and a Lusophone platform, in all seas and continents. Only the rest is missing – and the rest is everything.
*General Director of PLATAFORMA
