The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) government on Tuesday inaugurated the Legal Reformation Office to push ahead the SAR's legal reform.

Presiding the inauguration ceremony, secretary for administration and justice, Florinda da Rosa Silva Chan said that the new department would reinforce the government's functions in scrutinizing and following the amendments of laws and regulations.

She said the public has clung a high hope for the government to accelerate the law reformation works. With the office, the SAR government would improve manpower and technical assistance to the sector in order to coordinate in the legal reforms.

The office will engage in hearings with different social communities in its effort to provide consultations for legal reformation.

In line with the "One-country, two systems" principle, the Macao SAR has sustained the use of the Portuguese law system after it returned to the motherland in 1999. However, many clauses of the laws are already outdated. The SAR's fast growing economy and social development require an urgent legal reformation to make the laws applicable to the current development situation.