MACAO - Official of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) has vowed to control panda pair's upkeep costs while doing their best to look after the pair due to arrive in Macao later this year, the local Macao Post Daily reported on Wednesday.

The central government has chosen two pandas, a male code-named 717 and a female code-named 710, from the Chengdu Research Base of Panda Breeding in southwest China's Sichuan province, as a gift to the SAR.

The newspaper quoted Chen Limin, Secretary for Administration and Justice, as saying that the SAR government aimed to bring panda pair to Macao in time for Macao SAR's 11th anniversary celebration on December 20.

While construction of an 80-million-pataca ($10 million) enclosure of 3,000 square meters for the pair are underway at Seac Pai Van Park and is expected to be completed in September, the government was still unable to say how much the upkeep of the two pandas will cost the Treasury.

"Raising giant pandas is something new for us, we will control the cost but we also need to do our best for this national treasure," Tam Vai Man, President of Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) told media Tuesday, "We need to look at how it works for neighboring regions, but it (the costs of the upkeep) shouldn' t be too big.