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Consumer Council conducted its 'Supermarket price survey' for January on 6th January for the implementation of Section 2b), Article 10, Law 4/95/M of 12th June. Surveyed locations included supermarkets near Iao Hon Market and the Border Gate area (Portas do Cerco ) in N. Sra. de Fátima Parish. The latest 'Supermarket Price Survey' is now available on Consumer Council's website (www.consumer.gov.mo), and the 'Supermarket Price Information Platform' iPhone and Android apps. The survey is also available free of charge at the offices of Consumer Council, IACM's Iao Hon and S. Domingos Markets, bookstores and libraries. Consumers may also access the resources through WAP channels on their mobile phones. With reference to the local six parishes and the number of supermarkets in each parish, the Council has divided around 100 supermarkets into 8 areas for price collection. The Council collects prices from these supermarkets for the provision of a more comprehensive database for consumers to check price discrepancies and make price comparisons according to their desired locations. For inquiry, please call 8988 9315.
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The Chief Executive, Mr Chui Sai On, today sent his condolences to the family of the late Portuguese football legend Eusebio. Mr Chui said in his condolence letter that the people of Macao and the Portuguese community in Macao felt sorry to the death of Eusebio, who passed away on 5 January of a heart attack, at the age of 71. The Director of the Macao Economic and Trade Office in Lisbon, Mr Raimundo Arrais do Rosário, will personally hand the letter to the family of the late Eusebio da Silva Ferreira.
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The Information Technology Team of Institute for Tourism Studies has been audited for its IT Service Management System in October 2013 and successfully found to be in accordance with the requirements of ISO20000 by the renowned Bureau Veritas Certification. The certificate is valid from November 2013. IFT becomes the first higher education institute to receive this international certification. ISO20000 Certification in Information Technology Service Management Standard is inspired from the British Standard BS15000 model and aligned with the process approach defined by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) of Office of Government Commerce (OGC). ISO20000 Certification helps companies to improve the sustainability of their IT services and infrastructure, streamline IT processes, boost effectiveness and ensure a controlled, consistent high quality delivery of services both internally and externally for extended networks and their end customers. The major management processes of the ISO20000 Standard comprise IT Service Level, Budgeting & Accounting, Supplier & Business Relationship, Information Security, Change & Release, Incident & Service Request, etc. to ensure the ultimate objective of effective information technology service management. Implementing the management of ISO20000 demonstrates the commitment of IFT to provide and maintain high quality IT services. Modernising the administration is the policy of Macao SAR Government, which IFT has been actively cooperating with. Besides, IFT focuses on quality management of teaching and administration. With the advanced development of the Institute, most of its internal administrative processes and external services have become electronic, and its effective operation depends on the related IT support to a certain extent. Therefore, IFT has attached high importance to IT management and decided to introduce ISO20000 Information Technology Service Management Standard at the end of 2011 to ensure its effective, quality and sustainable IT services. Before achieving the ISO20000 Certification, IT department of IFT spent almost two years on attending trainings, developing service management system, designing management processes, testing and revising work processes, launching and accepting the audit. During this period, IT department faces some challenges, such as lack of manpower due to the increased workload, change of working method, insufficient knowledge, etc. Yet, these problems have been solved thanks to the great support, active participation, collaboration and patience of all members of the IT department, and the Institute finally received the ISO20000 Certification in November 2013. ISO20000 Certification is not the end but a new beginning to strive for becoming better and gradually approaching perfection. One of the key requirements of ISO20000 Standard is actively seeking for improvement in alignment with business objectives, customers' needs and IT development, so as to satisfy users' needs on IT service quality. Attaining ISO20000 Certification is not only for the purpose of adopting the best practice of information service and improving the service quality, but also introducing into the principles of ISO management including transparent and standardised work process, measurable performance and accountability.
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A paper which is co-authored by University of Macau (UM) Rector Wei Zhao, his research team, and Prof. Li Ming from East China Normal University has been ranked among China's 100 Most Influential International Papers (2012) and the Latest Most Influential Papers in China (on Biology), according to a recent issue of Statistical Data of Chinese S&T Papers 2013 released by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) under the Ministry of Science and Technology. Another paper co-authored by Rector Wei Zhao and Prof. Fu Xinwen from the University of Massachusetts received the Best Paper Award at the Eighth International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA 2013). The first paper, entitled "Visiting Power Laws in Cyber-Physical Networking Systems", written under the National 973 Internet of Things Project, is internationally acclaimed for its theoretical model which helps expand our knowledge of the laws of network-transmitted data and greatly facilitates the analysis of the upper reaches of peer-to-peer data latency in heterogeneous network. This paper demonstrates UM's innovation in research and produces a significant impact on the development of the internet of things. According to Rector Wei Zhao, any large-scale cyber-physical system such as the internet of things is comprised of numerous sub-systems. These sub-systems in turn have their own structures and network protocols which are hard to be compatible with one another, and such an incompatibility is restricting the development of the internet of things. However, the need for real-time communication and system control requires close association of these sub-systems. Hence a uniformed network data model is of vital importance to the effective allocation and management of network resources; or else any large-scale data network would be made ineffective and weak. One of the challenges facing the development of the internet of things is building a uniformed and effective network model. Scientists have observed that the distribution of network data very often works in the same way as that under the power-law, but they have yet to formulate an underpinning theoretical model for that. This award-winning paper reveals for the first time that such a phenomenon is a result of a massive amount of data distributed statistically in conformity with the special fractional partial differential equations. The other paper, entitled "Effective RSS Sampling for Forensic Wireless Localization", which is co-authored by Rector Wei Zhao and Prof. Fu Xinwen, a former student of his and currently an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, proposes a ground-breaking theory of signal control at a certain point by means of a particular pattern of sampling. The Nyquist theory is then used to apply to the result of the sampling to restore the original pattern of signal emissions so that interferences can be avoided. By applying the restored signal to compute the position, the problem of positioning is solved. This method does not rely on any system of signal feedback other than an RSS receiver. Empirical studies have shown that by using this method, positioning is by far more precise than using other techniques. The wireless positioning advocated in the paper has wide applications and very useful for wireless positioning in the complex indoor situations. One of the most important conferences on wireless network, the WASA focusses on the most advanced technologies of wireless network in the aspects of algorithms system, security and application. The conference proceedings are published in the international refereed journal Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). The ISTIC is the most authoritative rating body in China on the quality and influence of the technology research papers. It draws its data and statistics from various influential databases including the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Engineering Index (EI), the Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S), MEDLINE, the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Scopus. When selecting the 100 most influential international papers in China, apart from using the authoritative indexes as a guide, the ISTIC also convened a special panel of experts to rate the papers in terms of whether the research is groundbreaking, whether the journal that carries the paper is of good academic standing, and whether the study is at the frontier in its field. It also considered the type of the study and the references used. Thus, the winning of these awards really testifies to UM's research strength.
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According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, broad money supply rose marginally in November. As total loans increased faster than total deposits, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector grew from a month earlier. Money supply
Currency in circulation grew 1.5% whereas demand deposits dropped 9.4%. M1 thus decreased 7.8% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities increased 1.3%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, grew marginally by 0.1% to MOP445.7 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 30.5% and 20.4% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 23.8%, up 0.1 percentage point from a month ago but down 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 52.8%, down 0.4 percentage points month-to-month and 2.3 percentage points year-on-year.
Deposits
Resident deposits kept virtually unchanged from the preceding month at MOP436.9 billion. Of which, MOP deposits and other foreign currency deposits increased at respective rates of 0.3% and 1.5% while HKD deposits dropped 0.7%. Non-resident deposits grew 2.7% to MOP173.3 billion. On the other hand, public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 2.9% to MOP67.9 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector rose 1.0% from a month earlier to MOP678.1 billion. Loans
Domestic loans to the private sector increased 2.1% from a month ago to MOP254.8 billion. Among which, MOP79.4 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP152.1 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 31.2% and 59.7% of the total respectively. On the other hand, external loans increased 5.3% to MOP278.8 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 1.6% (MOP4.4 billion) and 22.4% (MOP62.4 billion) respectively.
Loan-to-deposit ratios
The loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-November grew 0.8 percentage points from the previous month to 50.5%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors also increased 2.1 percentage points to 78.7%. For enquiry, please contact:
Research and Statistics Department, Monetary Authority of Macao (Tel: 83952532; Fax: 28353042)
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Consumer Council conducted its first 'Supermarket price survey' for November on 2nd January for the implementation of Section 2b), Article 10, Law 4/95/M of 12th June. Surveyed locations included supermarkets near Areia Preta and Avenida de Venceslau de Morais in N. Sra. de Fátima Parish. The latest 'Supermarket Price Survey' is now available on Consumer Council's website (www.consumer.gov.mo), and the 'Supermarket Price Information Platform' iPhone and Android apps. The survey is also available free of charge at the offices of Consumer Council, IACM's Iao Hon and S. Domingos Markets, bookstores and libraries. Consumers may also access the resources through WAP channels on their mobile phones. With reference to the local six parishes and the number of supermarkets in each parish, the Council has divided around 100 supermarkets into 8 areas for price collection. The Council collects prices from these supermarkets for the provision of a more comprehensive database for consumers to check price discrepancies and make price comparisons according to their desired locations. For inquiry, please call 8988 9315.
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The Chief Executive, Mr Chui Sai On, said today that the Government would continue to uphold the principle of "Putting people first" in its governance in the New Year, and to improve people's well-being by establishing four major long-term mechanisms – in education, social security, health services and housing. In his New Year Message, Mr Chui said that in 2013, with the full support of the Central People's Government and the combined efforts of the Macao people, the Government proactively tackled the challenges of a complex and volatile external economic environment and maintained a steady economic development and a sustainable society. In the new year, the Government would continue to uphold the principle of "Putting people first" and to advance people's living standard by making a long-term plan on social security, health services, education, housing, transportation, and environmental protection. On top of the four major long-term mechanisms, the Government started another long term mechanism – cultivation of local talents to pursue Macao's sustainable development. Mr Chui said he understood that different problems and appeals co-existed in the society and that the Government would overcome these challenges in the New Year. With the full support of the Central Government, the Macao Government would steadfastly implement the principles of "One country, two systems", "Macao people governing Macao" and a high degree of autonomy. The Government would deepen co-operation and exchange on business and trade and other areas with the Mainland to boost Macao's economic diversification and enhance its competitiveness. On behalf of the SAR Government, Mr Chui extended to all citizens his cordial greetings and best wishes for the New Year.
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Consumer Council conducted its 'Supermarket price survey' for December on 30th December for the implementation of Section 2b), Article 10, Law 4/95/M of 12th June. Surveyed locations included 11 supermarkets in Taipa area. The latest 'Supermarket Price Survey' is now available on Consumer Council's website (www.consumer.gov.mo), and the 'Supermarket Price Information Platform' iPhone and Android apps. The survey is also available free of charge at the offices of Consumer Council, IACM's Iao Hon and S. Domingos Markets, bookstores and libraries. Consumers may also access the resources through WAP channels on their mobile phones. With reference to the local six parishes and the number of supermarkets in each parish, the Council has divided around 100 supermarkets into 8 areas for price collection. The Council collects prices from these supermarkets for the provision of a more comprehensive database for consumers to check price discrepancies and make price comparisons according to their desired locations. For inquiry, please call 8988 9315.
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Macao Post has launched the "Secure Electronic Postal Box – SEPBox" on 8 October 2013. After success registration and activation of "Secure Electronic Postal Box – SEPBox", users have the chance to win a brand new Smartphone. The first round lucky draw had been finished in November while the second round lucky draw was held on 11 December under supervision of the Administration Committee of Macao Post. The winner of the second round lucky draw is Ms. IAO SOK CHENG who has received a brand new Smartphone - Samsung Galaxy S4. With success registration and activation of "Secure Electronic Postal Box – SEPBox" on or before 31 March 2014, users are automatically eligible for the monthly lucky draw and there are still four lucky draws chances remain, the earlier you register and activate your SEPBox, the greater the chances of winning. For more information of "Secure Electronic Postal Box - SEPBox" and lucky draw, please visit our website http://seps.macaupost.gov.mo. For enquiry, please contact us at Tel: 28720 029 or email us at: support@seps.macaupost.gov.mo.
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To celebrate the coming Chinese New Year, Macao Post will issue a lucky ornament titled "Macao's Lunar Year of the Horse Stamp" on 3rd January 2014. It is engraved with laser techniques for highlighting the Macao Post Headquarters' building and a thin wooden card with the wood horse stamp image is affixed on the other side. The unique design is certainly a precious and commemorative collectable. It will be available for sale at the Macao Post Headquarters, the "Rua do Campo" Post Office, the Maritime Ferry Terminal Post Office, the Airport Post Office and the Communications Museum and the selling price is MOP 15.00.
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