Some one third of tourists from the Chinese mainland to Macao in the first quarter came under the so-called facilitated individual travel (FIT) scheme, according to figures released by the Macao Statistics and Census Bureau on Friday.

The bureau said that among 2.18 million visitor arrivals in the first quarter, 58.4 percent were recorded from the mainland, 30.7 percent of whom were individual travelers.

Macao logged 1.3 million visitor arrivals in March, an increase of 36 percent over the same month last year. Of the total, some 780,000 were mainlanders, which rose 74.1 percent year-on-year.

The FIT scheme in effect on July 28 last year has been extended to 14 cities in south China's Guangdong Province, Beijing and Shanghai to loosen restrictions on individual travels to Hong Kong and Macao. The effect of the policy stimulus has become increasingly prominent in boosting Macao's tourism.

With a population of 448,500, Macao hosted a record number of 11.8 million visitors last year. The mainland is now the largest source of tourists to Macao. The number of visitors from the mainland outpaced that from Hong Kong for the first time in November 2002.
 
(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2004)