Purpose: Talent development has become an important policy given prominence by the Macao government since Fernando Chui became its Chief Executive. The purpose of this paper is to review human resources and talent development policies in Macao and discuss the difficulties and challenges that they pose. Design/methodology/approach: Using Macao as a case study the paper indicates the difficulties and challenges experienced by emerging markets in fostering talent development for the sustainability of their local economies. Findings: This paper finds that, as an emerging market, Macao has to solve and overcome its institutional deficiencies (namely, by the establishment of both a professional registration regime and the means to gather metadata to enable predictions of the talents needed for the local economy and their potential scale) so as to please stakeholders. Only then can it truly introduce talent development schemes and programs. Originality/value: There have been very few studies on Macao’s talent development initiative. This paper tries to fill this gap in the existing understanding of talent development.