There are some businesses that could only be possible in Macau and Macau Fisherman’s Wharf is one of them. But right from the beginning, a good idea took the wrong path and never left it.
I like David Chow’s style. He is a man who says what he thinks and that is something Macau needs real bad, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
Nonetheless, all the energy, all the money, and all the promises which have gone into Macau Fisherman’s Wharf were a lost wager. From day one, the huge site which was given away by the government – and not for the first time without a feasibility study – has been a ghost town.
The more people try to explain the situation to me, the less I understand how certain investors could have been capable of pouring billions of patacas into a project, without spending a few million on long term marketing and promotion.
Aside from a few feeble and inefficient attempts, there was no marketing for the monster that is Macau Fisherman’s Wharf. Any good ideas that marketing teams might have had to promote the venue within and outside Macau, must have been kept inside locked drawers.
And so it is: shops closing one after the other and, I suspect, only a few of those that remain are paying rent, or at least, the rent that was agreed to at the outset. An almost non-existent flow of customers was inevitable.
The downfall of a good idea had one good consequence: David Chow ended up buying out his partners at wholesale prices because they couldn’t wait to divest themselves of their interests in the (bad) business. Of course he now needs to come up with US$200 million (1.6 billion patacas) to pay his ex-partners, which it seems is not an easy task since he failed to meet the June 20th deadline to do so.
Although I understand that Chow now wants to renovate Macau Fisherman’s Wharf, I can’t understand why the Macau government, or Beijing (which has to approve the land reclamation) can accept the proposed second phase. Chow will need a miracle to transform Macau Fisherman’s Wharf (phase one) into what it should have been since the beginning: a project with a good head on its shoulders.
The project needs more than just construction, it needs constant innovation, backed by imaginative and ongoing marketing. Otherwise, he can kiss goodbye to phase two. In fact, if this was any other place than Macau, he would say goodbye to phase two now, (but as we know anything is possible in Macau).
While we are on the subject of strange businesses, one of my favorites was the handover of sub-concessions to would-be airlines Macau Asia Express and Golden Dragon. This happened four years ago and, at the time, we wrote about the mistake of giving sub-concessions to companies without a plan or the capacity to operate – at least that we knew of – specifically Golden Dragon.
The only sub-concession that worked out – and we all know what price had to be paid – was Viva Macau. The company still needs to negotiate a lot of bumps and potholes on the long road ahead, but it deserves a word of recognition for its Herculean efforts in trying to thrive in a hostile market and in a region where competition is fierce.
With Shun Tak as a partner, Macau Asia Express had some chance of going forward. In an exclusive interview with Macau Business less than two years ago, Pansy Ho told us that the company would become a reality within a few months. We don’t know what changed, but it’s a pity it did.
We believe that Golden Dragon never had a chance. Only a blind man could fail to see it, but since there are no elections, Edmund Ho Hau-wah’s executive doesn’t need to explain certain decisions that were clearly rushed, otherwise…
Another piece of business that is creating a stir is the liberalisation of the production and importation of energy.
Like any other consumer, we support liberalisation, at least in principle. We support strategies based on a market economy, where competition exists, allowing citizens to enjoy goods at better rates.
What we don’t understand is how they want to take back from Companhia de Electricidade de Macau (CEM), a service that it truly was never allowed to provide. Let me explain. CEM has the capacity to produce much more than it has done so far, although exceptionally it’s cheaper to import energy, than to produce it here.
Over the years, CEM was more or less forced to import energy, although it had the means to produce it. Nowadays, the company imports 70 percent and our next door neighbors are keen to keep it that way. The same goes for the importation of water.
We understand the need for political compromises with Guangdong and other friends, but Macau residents deserve better than a few badly-sketched excuses. By the way, contrary to what secretary Lau Sio Io says, CEM has plenty of space in Coloane to build more generators, with capacity to use eco-friendly natural gas.
To say otherwise, Mr Secretary, is to be ignorant of the reality or, worse, an attempt to distort it. Let’s go ahead and liberalise the market, without any ifs or buts.
Now, last but not least, for at least a decade, anyone with a little sense has been warning our politicians that it is important to position our airport in such a way as to guarantee that it won’t suffer from the inevitable creation of direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan.
Many people, including ourselves, have warned Air Macau about this. It was important to diversify the routes and implement some sort of strategic vision. Five years ago, in a rare interview, Francis Tam, secretary for the Economy and Finances, told Macau Business that it was the government’s obligation to protect the airport, not Air Macau. Wise words that remained precisely that: words.
The likely drop of 80 percent in the number of passengers from Taiwan will surely bring added difficulties that could have been avoided. The winner was, once again, a lack of action, sluggishness and pure imbecility.

by: Paulo A. Azevedo