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NOTES ON MR R E HOLLOWAY'S VISIT TO MACAO 13/14 JANUARY 1988
I was met for the first time on any visit to Macao by a representative of the Macao Government. He was Mr Jose Gomes, the Governor's Diplomatic Adviser.
2.
I called on Blair Littlejohn, the Managing Director of the Standard Chartered Bank in Macao. He said a large number of the banks in Macao, including Standard Chartered, had been defrauded by a local businessman who had since disappeared. By means of forged bills of lading he had borrowed a total of about patacas 250,000m. The businessman's wife had been traced to Seattle where she had, apparently, been challenged at the airport carrying a suitcase full of US dollars. Mr Littlejohn said the Macao economy was proceeding much as before. He suspected that the rather high figures for growth took no account of currency fluctuations and that real growth was much smaller than claimed. The banks were ever hopeful that one or more of the big projects often discussed in Macao would come to fruition. However there was a long history of projects failing to get off the ground. The proposed new airport would provide all the banks with some welcome extra business if it went ahead. He thought it likely that the financial package would be shared among all the banks represented in Macao. Standard Chartered is the only British bank. There are no Japanese banks, though representatives from Hong Kong visit quite often. The new port, also, if it was built, would provide opportunities. However, he said there was already a deep water port in Zhuhai which was little used.
There had to be constant dredging to keep it clear, but in any case the small amount of industry in Zhuhai provided very little business for the port. There was a better argument for the new airport. For a start it could take over the charter traffic operated by Stanley Ho's SDTM to bring gamblers to Macao from other parts of the Far East and the United States; at present this traffic was routed to Hong Kong and the passengers were brought on to Macao by jetfoil. He disputed the argument that 80% of visitors to Macao were from Hong Kong and that therefore only 20% were potential users of direct flights into Macao: he said the 80% included a large number of foreigners who were coming via Hong Kong (there was no other way). He thought it possible that if Macao opened an international airport some tourists would find it more convenient to use Macao as a base from which to visit Hong Kong. It was cheaper to stay in Macao than Hong Kong. Mr Littlejohn said he thought there was a good chance that the Taipa City project would go ahead now that Gordon Wu had taken it over. It would include a shopping centre for tourists that could compete with the shops in Hong Kong because overheads would be much less. Apart from the proposed projects Mr Littlejohn saw little chance of substantial growth in the economy.
3. I had lunch with Malcolm Curry, the Managing Director of TELEMAC (75% owned by Cable & Wireless plc). He said the company was now making an operating profit but had not as yet made much impression on the debt incurred during the start-up period. He said that partly in order to make economies and partly to help with the localisation programme, the number of expatriates working for the company had been reduced and there were now only 14 of them in Macao. Technically everything was going very well and a good service was being provided. Whether Cable & Wireless would be able to recoup its investment and make a real profit remained to be seen. Their licence would run until the year 2001 which gave them a fair amount of time but was not over-generous. If Macao "took off" then Cable & Wireless were in a good position. However there was
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