Co-Chairs,
Members of the Assessment Team,
Fellow Members of the APG ,
Executive Secretary and Members of the Secretariat,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Firstly, Macao, China would like to express its gratitude to the assessment team for their effort in preparing this informative report, as well as their straightforward and constructive comments and recommendations given. Macao, China will carry out a thorough and prudent review on the existing system and place high priority to follow up with related Government agencies with the implementation of the recommendations contained in this report.

We appreciate the great effort of the ME team who indeed had offered significant contribution to the MER, in spite of the unexpected difficulties they happened to encounter during the exercise. In our point of view, difficulties primarily fell into three areas:

Firstly, the evaluation exercise would be a lot more effective if it took place after the fundamental and recent amendments to our AML/CFT had been in place.

Secondly, difficulties rose from the fact that Macao, China is one of the very few jurisdictions in the APG belonging to the continental law family (which created further challenge to the assessment team to a certain extent).

Last but not least, personal difficulties faced by the members of the assessment team had imposed additional pressure on themselves, on the APG Secretariat and Macau, China as the assessed jurisdiction. This is reflected in the tight deadlines within the adopted methodology, in particular the feedback process that demanded an extra-combined effort of the Macau agencies.

Nevertheless, we are pleased with the recognition for the latest development of Macao, China in the AML/CFT areas by the members of the assessment team and this is encouraging to us for our future work to fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

We will keep adopting a consistent policy that complies with international standards such as the FATF 40+9 Recommendations, the Basel Principles and others relevant standards in order to implement AML/CFT measures in different areas.

Notwithstanding that we are pleased with the outcome of this assessment exercise, we are equally aware as well of the challenges that we are facing ahead but we are strongly committed to overcoming them.

Since the new legislation on AML/CFT covers a wide range of business activities and requires more sophisticated customer due diligence standards and reporting obligations, it is expected that the various business sectors, especially the DNFBP’ s, will take some time to fully implement the control measures and allocate the necessary resources. Therefore, educational and public awareness programs will be one of the main priorities.
On the other hand, the MSAR Government is to allocate adequate resources, including human resources, IT support and training for all the supervisory authorities and law enforcement agencies in order to cope with the new requirements.

In the medium to long term, and taking into consideration the actual situation of Macao, China, the MSAR Government will make it a first priority in our AML/CFT regime to work progressively on the recommendations of this report, which laid down the areas identified as our major shortcomings.

An initial follow-up of the recommendations includes the following:

- the enactment of the Legal Cooperation on Criminal Matters Law set out the basis to enhance international cooperation, in particular to promote international cooperation agreements with other countries and territories which we will actively pursue ;

- a cross border declaration or disclosure system is under study by the MSAR Government taking into consideration the competence of law enforcement agencies, and this study will lead to the adoption of a proper measure that meets our needs;

- a further review is to be carried out on the risks associated with NPO’ s in Macao, China, and the required actions to implement the corresponding AML/CFT measures will also be studied;

In the meantime, this exercise has greatly improved the fine-tuning of cooperation of all our domestic agencies involved. Continuous effort is necessary to review the effectiveness of the existing legal system and the implementation measures through the AML/CFT Working Group, and proposals will be elaborated to the MSAR Government for revising the AML/CFT policies and procedures when needed.

Simultaneously, each of the agencies involved will carry out individual assessment on its respective needs so as to enact the corrective measures adequate to overcome its shortcomings. Furthermore, they will continue to seek opportunities whereby they can put the plans in practice in their respective sector for strengthening the overall AML/CFT system.

We are fully aware that indeed, an effective AML/CFT system is only as strong as the strength of its weakest link.

That’s why, for the moment, although we are pleased with the outcome of the present report, we do know that there is always room for improvement as the report says.

We believe that the path for improvement is just at its beginning in search of an effective AML/CFT system. It is our duty and challenge to keep straddling it in the best of our abilities.

Thank you.