Macao's visitor arrivals for the first seven months of this year reached 1.2 million, a drop of 11. 9 percent year-on-year, according to the figures released on Monday by the city's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

The figures showed that visitors from the Chinese mainland (5. 98 million), Hong Kong (3.9 million), Taiwan (734,731) and Malaysia (178,815) respectively saw a year-on-year decrease of 17. 6 percent, 2.4 percent, 6.6 percent and 30.1 percent.

Meanwhile, those from Japan (194,745) and Thailand (148,272) slightly increased by 1.1 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.

The cumulative number of same-day visitors accounted for 53.6 percent of the total in the period, at 6.49 million.

Analyzed by mode of transport, visitor arrivals by land dropped by 14.8 percent year-on-year to 6.38 million in the first seven months, and those by sea and air went down by 8.3 percent and 9 percent respectively, according to the DSEC.

(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2009)