Despite the tightening cross-border travel regulations, Macao's visitor arrivals still reached 2,343, 451 in June, a year-on-year increase of 22 percent, according to the latest figures released on Monday by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) of the city.

The DSEC figures showed that the majority of the visitors came from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, which accounted for 58, 26.6 and 5.5 percent of the total respectively in June.

In view of the tightening of the Individual Visit Scheme, 490, 727 Mainland visitors still traveled to Macao under such arrangement in June, representing 36.1 percent of the visitor arrivals from the Chinese Mainland, according to the figures.

As for the first half of this year, visitor arrivals went up by 18.1 percent year-on-year to 14,925,604,, the DSEC said.

 Visitors from the Chinese Mainland and Southeast Asia surged by 27.1 percent and 56.6 percent respectively during the period, while those from Hong Kong SAR dropped by 1.4 percent, according to the DSEC. Same-day visitors shared 52.9 percent of the total visitor arrivals, at 7,902,844.   

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2008)