"The young Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) government has pinned down a pragmatic policy orientation for Macao, and shown its specialty in carrying out a smooth social and economic transformation," commended Bai Zhijian, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Macao.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua Friday, Bai reviewed the four-year administration by the first generation of the Macao SAR government, which took office upon Macao's return to the motherland in 1999.

Bai, who has been on his post in Macao for over two years, said that the Macao SAR government has adopted a step-by-step way to reinforce the social stability while stimulating the economy.

The SAR government led by Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah has designated the gaming and tourism as the pillar industries while balancing the development of the tertiary and industrial sectors.

"The SAR government timely broke up the monopoly of the gaming market by enforcing a public bidding for casino operating licenses in 2002 to keep the sector in pace with the overall economic reform. Such a move needs determination and wisdom," said Bai.

The open-up of the gaming industry has given new impetus to the century-old business in Macao, which is poised to contribute close to 10 billion patacas (US$1.25 billion) to the city's tax coffer this year, compared to 7.5 billion patacas (about US$938 billion) last year.

Two foreign casino operators which entered the market through the bidding plan to invest billions of US dollars in Macao to build entertainment and hotel facilities from next year.

"The young administration's decision-making ability to cope with emergencies was tested by the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which broke out in its neighboring regions of Guangdong and Hong Kong in April," said Bai.

He recalled that well aware of the densely populated city's risk of epidemic breakout, Chief Executive Ho began to deploy disease-control measures as early as March when SARS was not a hotissue among the public.

As a result of the early preparation, which cost 60 million patacas (US$7.5 million) of government funding in the first half year, Macao won a complete victory in the battle against SARS with zero casualty and one imported case. The credibility of the SAR government and the chief executive was further driven up by after the SARS attack, Bai said.

As Macao prepares for the fourth anniversary of the founding of the SAR, which is to be marked on Saturday, it has set up a sound political and legal foundation through the practices of the Basic Law and 65 bills and 150 regulations that were passed to reinforce the SAR's legal construction over the past four years, he added.

The official held that Macao's future development has been closely integrated into the regional economic circle of the Pearl River Delta Region with the implementation of the Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) on Jan. 1, 2004, and the upcoming Zhuhai-Macao Cross-border Industrial Park.

"The Central Government has attached great importance to Macao's development, which will be benefited from a number of state-level projects. In the next few years, over 30 billion patacas (US$3.8 billion) of investment will be pooled on the 26.8 square kilometers of land," said the official, who is confident of the SAR's economic prospect.

(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2003)