The Commission of Audit carried out an audit on the financial aids granted by all public departments of the Macao Special Administrative Region in year 2001, the objective is to study and analyze disposal, granting and supervision of financial aids by public departments, whether it can be ensured that the financial resources can be properly used and whether there is room for improvement.

The major findings in the audit are as follows:

1. The total amount of financial aids granted by the Macao SAR government through 39 public departments and commonly shared expenditures in year 2001 was MOP 1.14 billion, amounting to 7.6% of the total expenditures of the Macao SAR government.

2. There are overlaps of the functions of public departments in granting financial aids. There is no clear division of work among the departments. Activity areas of wider concerns receive repeated financial aids from different departments. It is possible that several public departments input resources at the same time on the events of same kind or even the same organization hosting the events.

3. When processing applications for financial aids, public departments do not ask the applicants to report other financial aids and income sources, this results in repeated and wrong allocation of resources through several departments granting repeated financial aids to the same person or event.

4. There is room for improvement in the procedures of granting financial aids (application, examination, approval, follow-up and assessment) in both granting ordinary as well as extra-ordinary financial aids.

5. The granting departments in general have such function as conferred by law. Proper approvals are also given to the subsidized projects. But there are different methods of recording such expenditure with regard to its economic classification.

6. Not all departments published financial aids granted in the Official Bulletin of the Macao Special Administrative Region.

7. A number of public departments provide financial aids to the welfare associations / cultural, recreational & sport associations composed of their own staffs, in the same way as to the civil organizations. The members of such cultural or sport associations are mainly their staffs, financial aids granted to such organizations can be deemed as some sort of subsidy to the staffs.

Based on these findings, the major suggestions of the Commission of Audit are as follows:

1. Public departments shall grant financial aids to the civil organizations in accordance with the Policy Address, and take reference from policy focuses, so as to set the priorities of the areas in which financial aids should be granted.

2. The general principle of resources allocation should be an overall consideration approach, and should promote centralized processing of applications for financial aids in the same area by a dedicated department. This can be achieved through better communication and work division among various public departments. This can facilitate fair and transparent allocation of resources to the same type of activities, and can integrate similar activities to achieve better effectiveness.

3. Public departments shall process applications and granting of financial aids with a fair, transparent and unified set of standards, make written guidance / internal instructions to regulate application, examination, approval and granting of financial aids, formulate mechanism of follow-up and assessment of granting financial aids in order to monitor and evaluate its effectiveness.