Located in the 80-storey CITIC Plaza, the highest building in South China, the International Enterprise Singapore Visa Centre, also known as the Guangzhou Consular Office of the Singapore Consulate General in Xiamen, will officially open on February 26.

It will provide business visas, individual self-sponsored tourist visas and group visas to local residents.

The International Enterprise Singapore is also planning similar visa centres for Chengdu and Qingdao in Sichuan and Shandong provinces respectively later this year.

Currently, visas for Chinese travellers to Singapore are issued only in Beijing, Shanghai, and Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province.

The new visa centre will help meet the demand from the growing number of tourists visiting Singapore.

According to statistics from the Singaporean tourism department, more than 600,000 Chinese people annually visit the Southeast Asian nation.

And a large number of the Chinese travellers who visit Singapore come from Fujian Province and Guangdong Province which borders Hong Kong and Macao.

(China Daily February 17, 2003)