The pension system for Macau’s public service workers could face a deficit of 2.77 billion patacas (300.7 million euros) in 2031, the local Government warned today.
The Executive Council of Macau presented a bill that allows for the transfer of a portion of the territory’s budget surplus to the Pension Fund, which administers public service pensions.
In a press conference, the spokesperson for the Executive Council, Wong Sio Chak, said that this will be “a guarantee mechanism” for the financial resources of the Pension Fund. The fund will face a “situation of financial imbalance,” but Wong stressed that the deficit only involves the previous retirement scheme, which was replaced by a new scheme in 2007.
In the same press conference, the president of the Pension Fund stated that in June, the old scheme was already paying more than 7,100 pensions, outnumbering the contributors still active, who total 6,465. Coupled with the rise in average life expectancy, Diana Maria Vital Costa warned of “a peak in retirements” over the next five years and predicted that by 2031, the old scheme will be paying 9,150 pensions with only 3,290 active contributors.
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Wong Sio Chak stated that spending on pensions under the old scheme will reach 6.4 billion patacas (692 million euros) over the next five years, creating a deficit of 2.7 billion patacas.
The proposal, which will be sent to the Legislative Assembly, the local parliament, allows the head of the Government to set a percentage of Macau’s budget surplus to be transferred to the Pension Fund. The director of the Financial Services Bureau, Ho In Mui, promised to “jointly evaluate” the weight of the deficit with the Pension Fund every year to define the amount to be transferred.
The budget surplus of Macau, the only jurisdiction in the world with no public debt, is transferred to a financial reserve, whose assets reached a new high in April: 697.3 billion patacas (75.8 billion euros). Macau recorded a surplus of 18.6 billion patacas (1.99 billion euros) in the first five months of the year, up 55.5% compared to the same period in 2025.
In June 2019, the Government created a mechanism that transfers 3% of the territory’s budget balance to the Social Security Fund (FSS) every year to respond to the pressure of an accelerating aging population.
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The FSS, which covers all workers with resident status in the Chinese region, operates separately from the Pension Fund, which is exclusively for public service workers. According to the most recent report, the FSS earned 6.48 billion patacas (700.9 million euros) in 2024, largely due to budget transfers.
