By Ben Hoi
In the last decade, the development of Macao grew rapidly. More and more casinos were opened by the foreign investors and attracted tourists from around the world, especially from mainland China. According to the research of the Government of Macao Special Administrative Region Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), Macao had more than six times increase of GDP from 2002-2012 , which is the second highest growth in the world, just behind Luxembourg. Does it mean that the living standard of Macao is continually improving? Unfortunately, the growth figures don’t mean everything.
There were more than 42,000 applications of Economic Housing this spring just before the deadline and the number is about 20 fold of the supply. Since housing prices are very high and continuously rising rapidly, people are not able to afford private housing. Low and middle income families spend more than half of the total income on apartment rental. The large number of foreign workers and immigrants in Macao stimulated the demand of temporary housing and pushed up the rental prices. Those economic houses used to be means to provide people who had financial difficulties with affordable private housing. But now, they become the only resort for many middle class families to own a living quarters. It seems that salaries of Macao residents are higher than before, but, in contrast, they become poorer now in terms of the ability to own a property.
It seems good news that salaries of Macao residents doubled in the past decade. However, in 2003, a two-bedroom apartment in Macao cost about MOP360,000, the price jumped to MOP3,700,000 in 2014 according to the DSEC’s report. A university graduate can earn an average salary of MOP13,000 per month. It’s already considered well paid in comparison to other nearby cities. However, they still have to save 287 months (24 years) to buy a two-bedroom apartment under the condition that the housing price remains at this level. It’s not difficult to explain why there is an increasing number of younger workers and students applying for economic housing.
Is it necessary for Macao to grow so fast? Is it worth to develop and lose the living standard as the price to pay? As a Macao resident myself, indeed I don’t care about the rank of GDP in the world, and how many billions of surplus every year the government collects. The Macao government should seek more measures to spend the huge money to improve the living standard of Macao residents.