The most remarkable event having occurred at the end of the 20th century was the reunification of Macao into mainland China as a Special Administrative Region, taking place on December 10th, 1999. In response to this unprecedented historical event, I, being a second generation Macao descendant, decided to return to my mother city and take part in this very important transition. Consequently, I took the initiative and moved my principal place of business from Hong Kong back to Macao where the Head Office of Banco Delta Asia is located. In order to facilitate my social works in Macao, I took the lead with a few entrepreneurs of the like mind to establish the Macao SME Association in May 1998 in order to help small and medium businessmen to go through the difficult period of social disorders and economic recession at that time.
In the past 20 years since our inception in 1998, we have joined hands with the Macao SAR government to go through all the thinks and thins. Together we survived the Asian financial crisis in 1999, the SARS epidemics in 2003, and the global financial crisis in 2008 and came out well from all these said adversities. We are also proud of having participated in building Macao’s present status as an international tourist hub. For the local entrepreneurs, we helped them to lessen their labour shortage problems and access to government financial aids. All these achievements are hard earned efforts, the realization of which could not have happened without the support of all walks of life in the society.
Going forward, our mission is to follow the Central Government’s guiding policies, i.e. to help the SAR government to govern Macao by the rule of law and to diversify Macao’s economy, making it more balanced and less reliant on the gaming industry. Under such guiding principles, we are striving to promote STEM education in Macao and the industrial 4,0 initiative so that we may train up enough young elites to engage in science, engineering and technology for the eventual goal of making Macao a “Smart City” and to innovate our industries with artificial intelligence and automation. In order to implement these objectives, we are going to launch in the middle of September the “Delta Asia SME Training Academy” to cultivate the startups in innovate and creative business ventures. The Academy will also help the senior entrepreneurs in implementing their succession plans.
As Macao is for centuries known as a free entrepôt and a micro economy, it is the long wish of the government and the people to look abroad for business opportunities. With such a concept in mind, the Macao SME Association succeeded to join the International Small Business Congress (ISBC) in 2010 and I have eventually become its chairman in 2015. Moreover, we have lately been invited to join the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) as an affiliate. This organization was initiated by the U.S. Small Business Administration in 1963 and has now become an associate of the United Nations with head quarters based in George Washington University. It is now represented in over 80 countries across five continents.
This is definitely the most powerful and influential SME organization in the world. We are proud of the fact that we are the only affiliate of ICSB which is a private non-government related entity, while all the others are government owned institutions.
It is also worthy mentioning that we do publish a White Paper annually for the last six consecutive years. This White Paper outlines the macro economic conditions and the micro business environment affecting the small and medium businessmen in Macao. Thus, under such circumstances, the Macao SME Association is using the White Paper as a vehicle to appeal to the government for legislating the appropriate policies for the business community. Meanwhile, for the sake of responding promptly to government consultations from time to time, we have recently established a Think Tank for this purpose. We are endeavoring to do our best to serve the needs of the Macao business community.
Our milestone for the next two decades is to play the role as responsible citizens to contribute to the success of the One Country Two Systems concept. We will also follow faithfully the guidance of chairman Xi as the core leader and to help fulfilling his Great China Dream.
Lastly, I appeal to your continued support to the Macao SME Association so as to help the small and medium businessmen become the main pillar in Macao’s future economic development. I thank you once again for your generous support.
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