The number of violence crimes has been sliding down in the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), an official said on Thursday.

Cheong Kuoc Va, the Secretary for Security of the MSAR, told a press conference that the number of violence crimes stood at 193 in the first quarter, a year-on-year drop of two percent. The MSAR in 2005 saw a drop of 8.1 percent in the number of violence crimes over the previous year, the official said. The number of overall criminal cases, however, reached 2,634 in the first quarter, a year-on-year rise of seven percent, Cheong said.

The region, with a population of 480,000, recorded 40 juvenile delinquency cases in the quarter, up 5.3 percent over the same period in 2005, he added.

(Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2006)