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At present, only about 30 countries and territories are subject to visit visa or permit requirements. These include 11 administrations, including Taiwan, which are not recognised by the British Government. People from these countries and territories have to apply for visas or permits before they travel to Hong Kong. Visitors from Taiwan apply for Taiwan visit permits, which are issued by the Hong Kong Immigration Department.
Since January this year, we have streamlined application procedures for Taiwan visit permits, and computerised the processing and issue of these permits. As a result, the processing time of applications has been shortened from seven working days to five working days. We have also simplified classification of Taiwan visit permits. We used to issue seven different types of Taiwan visit permits. Now, we issue only three types. These three types are single journey permits, multiple journey permits valid for one year, and multiple journey permits valid for two years. Multiple journey permits offer a great deal of convenience to frequent travellers from Taiwan. and have proved to be the most popular choice. Over 90% of Taiwan visitors to Hong Kong apply for multiple journey permits.
Besides simplifying pre-entry procedures, we have also improved immigration clearance procedures upon entry. Since the end of September, computer-assisted optical character readers have been installed at immigration control points. We use these readers to scan machine-readable travel documents, including Taiwan visit permits which are now issued in machine-readable format. With this improvement. the immigration clearance time for holders of Taiwan visit permits issued from January this year is reduced by 20 seconds per person. The total savings in clearance time are significant, considering that Taiwanese visitors account for almost one-fifth of all visitors to Hong Kong.
All of these changes have made travel to Hong Kong easier and more comfortable for Taiwanese visitors. There is no evidence of a downward trend in the arrival of Taiwanese visitors due to our permit requirement. As a matter of fact, the number of Taiwan visitors has increased by an average of over 6% a year since 1991. Furthermore, in the first eight months this year, the number of Taiwanese visitors to Hong Kong has risen by about 8%, compared with the same period last year.