MACAO, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The election of Macao's chief executive will have a budget of about 4 million U.S. dollars to cover the related procedures, the president of special administrative region (SAR)'s chief executive election management committee said on Thursday.
The committee's president Song Man Lei said the budget proposal of 32,453,200 patacas (about 4.02 million dollars) would be submitted to Chief Executive Chui Sai On for approval.
She added that the proposed budget represented only a slight increase of 120,000 patacas (about 14,871 dollars) compared with the budget for the chief executive election in 2014. The adjustment took into consideration the increase in consumer prices over the recent years.
Song said the committee planned to operate three polling stations in this year's poll from five in 2014 to choose members of the chief executive election committee. This would reduce costs relating to the venue rents and the staff needed for the polling stations.
When asked about the spending cap for each candidate campaigning for the chief executive position, she said the SAR's Chief Executive Election Law stated that such limit was set at 0.02 percent of the aggregate revenues of the general budget of the SAR government in the election year.
