The border crossing capacity of Barrier Gate, a checkpoint that connects the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) with the Chinese mainland, will be significantly enhanced once the facility's expansion project is completed in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to a press statement released on Friday by the SAR government.

Expansion project of the Barrier Gate, which links Macao to neighboring mainland city Zhuhai, was launched on June 11 last year, as the number of visitor arrivals from the mainland were on the rise in recent years.

The Barrier Gate's building area will be increased from 17,880 square meters to 23,120 square meters, and the facility will be able to handle 500,000 border crossings by visitors every day, compared with the current daily volume of 300,000, the SAR government said.

According to the figures from the SAR's Statistics and Census Bureau, Macao logged 8.9 million visitor arrivals during the first five months of 2009, of which over 4.4 million came from the mainland. Some 4.29 million of the visitor arrivals from the mainland entered the SAR through the Barrier Gate in the period.

(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2009)