Macau, China, July 2, 2024 (Lusa) - The head of the management company of the world's first pataca-only fund, to be launched on Wednesday, told Lusa today that he wanted to increase local financial literacy and boost the pataca as an investment currency.
More than two decades after the approval of the law regulating the constitution and operation of investment funds in Macau, Bernardo Tavares Alves, founder and chairman of A&P Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Investimento, established the first public fund in Macau.
The A&P Macau Patacas Treasury Fund, which will be launched on Wednesday, is "an open-ended public fund" and its investment objective is "to invest in high-quality money market instruments and short-term bank deposits," he told Lusa.
"A&P is here in Macau to try to redefine the capital ratio. We have to develop this market, since the government says we have to diversify the economy and, in the financial system, this part of funds really hasn't been touched," he added.
With an economy deeply dependent on the gaming industry, the Macau authorities have selected various sectors, including finance, to diversify the coffers' revenues.
In this sense, acknowledged Bernardo Tavares Alves, the project's ambition is to kick-start the funds industry and "potentialise the pataca as the local currency, the regional currency of the Greater Bay Area".
The Greater Bay Area is Beijing's project to create a global metropolis comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province, in a region with around 86 million inhabitants and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of over one trillion euros, similar to the GDP of Australia, Indonesia or Mexico, the G20 countries.
"The Hong Kong dollar is a strong international currency and is also widely traded in the Greater Bay Area. The time has now come for Macau to have an investment currency (...) In Macau we all receive our salaries in patacas, but to invest it always has to be in Hong Kong dollars, and that's what I want to try to break," he said.
The new financial instrument, he said, "the most basic fund in terms of investment", is aimed at the "general population" of the special administrative region, where financial literacy is still "quite low".
"It could be an ideal fund to launch first for the population to understand what a fund is, or how this fund could change the dynamics of the financial system in Macau," he explained.
The A&P Macau Patacas Treasury Fund will for the time being only be available at the Bank of China of Macau, which is also the depositary institution, i.e. the one responsible for supervising clients' capital.
"Tomorrow [Wednesday] the banks will start explaining to clients that this fund exists and for three weeks we will have the fund in IPO [Initial Public Offering], in which we, the managers, won't touch the fund, so they will raise the money and on the 24th or three weeks later the investment of the fund will start and the operation will begin," said Bernardo Tavares Alves.
The future idea, he added, is to "try to launch one fund a year for the next three years".
A bond fund and an equity fund, with investments in public debt securities and shares on the stock exchange, respectively, are in the plans of A&P Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Investimento.
CAD/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
