The Macao Special Administration Region (SAR) government Tuesday announced that it will apply stricter rules concerning the transit arrangements of Chinese mainland visitors.

The move is aimed to better regulate the transits of Chinese passport holders through the SAR and to avoid the misapplication of the policy, according to a press release from the SAR's Public Security Police (PSP).

Under the new measures, the length of stay allowed for Chinese passport holders transiting through Macao will be reduced from 14 days to seven days, the PSP said in the statement.

As for Chinese passport holders who fail to go to their destinations abroad through Macao for the first time, their stay in Macao will be limited to two days when they pass through the SAR for the second time, and will be denied entry for the third time, the PSP also said.

In addition to the tightening of transiting, the new measure also forbid Chinese mainland visitors, who hold the travel permitsto Macao and Hong Kong and who only acquire the Hong Kong visas, from entering Macao through Hong Kong, according to the PSP statement.

According to the latest figures from the SAR's Statistics and Census Service, visitors from the Chinese mainland accounted for 59.9 percent of the total, and among these visitors, 42.5 percent traveled to Macao under the Individual Visit Scheme.

Visitors from the Chinese mainland to the Macao SAR increased 30.1 percent year-on-year in May 2008, according to the DSEC figures.

(Xinhua News Agency July 16, 2008)