Extending the Individual Visit Scheme

82. The Individual Visit Scheme for Mainland residents to visit Hong Kong has gone a long way towards boosting the local retail and job markets. Last year Hong Kong received a total of 4.2 million Mainland visitors under the Scheme, bringing additional tourism receipts of around $6.5 billion. We will extend the Scheme on a step-by-step basis. After discussion with the Mainland authorities, I am pleased to announce that from November 1 this year, the Scheme will be extended to four more Mainland cities, namely Chengdu, Jinan, Shenyang and Dalian. As the next stage, we aim to extend the Scheme to those Pan-PRD provincial capitals not yet covered by the Scheme.