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Macau's visitor arrivals rose 8 percent in October from a year earlier to 2.6 million, the Chinese territory's government said Friday.
The visitor growth rate has slowed in recent months as China has taken steps to curb the growth of Macau's gambling industry by tightening visa rules that, among other things, now limit to once every three months the times Guangdong residents can go to Macau. Total visitor numbers grew 2.1 percent in September and 8.5 percent in August.
Arrivals from mainland China rose 12.2 percent in the period on year, but the number of mainland Chinese from Guangdong and other major cities under the tightened visa scheme fell 25.9 percent from a year earlier, the Statistics and Census Service said on its Web site.
Macau, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, has overtaken Las Vegas as the world's biggest gambling center. It received 25.2 million visitors in the January-October period, up 14.5 percent from the same time last year, the government said.
American casino operators have been investing heavily in the former Portuguese colony since 2002 when the four-decade gambling monopoly ended. However, the unfolding global financial crisis has taken a toll on its growth with struggling Las Vegas Sands Corp. announcing last week to halt construction on multibillion dollar projects in the Chinese gambling city.
