The government will start to distribute its annual “wealth-sharing” cash handouts to residents from early July, Executive Council spokesman Leong Heng Teng announced Thursday.
The amount this year is 9,000 patacas for permanent and 5,400 patacas for non-permanent residents, both unchanged from last year, Leong said at a press conference at Government Headquarters yesterday.
The last batch of beneficiaries will receive their cash handouts in September, according to Leong.
According to Leong, this year 656,772 permanent residents and 53,280 non-permanent residents are eligible to benefit from the scheme. The total number of eligible beneficiaries amounts to 710,052 this year.
The government’s expenditure on the scheme will reach 6.2 billion patacas, Leong said.
According to a statement by the Executive Council yesterday, the total number of beneficiaries (permanent and non-permanent residents) who received their cash handouts in 2008 – the year when the cash handout scheme was launched – was 534,672, involving a total government expenditure of 2.55 billion patacas.
The cash handout in 2008 was 5,000 patacas for permanent and 3,000 patacas for non-permanent residents.
The total expenditure on the scheme dropped to 2.26 billion patacas in 2011, when the government lowered the amount to 4,000 patacas for permanent and 2,400 patacas for non-permanent residents. Since 2011, the expenditure on the handout scheme has been rising, the statement pointed out.
