Taiwan's businessmen and experts on Tuesday called upon the island's authorities to simplify the procedures when approving mainland residents' visits to stimulate local industries.

Su Hong-Yi, president of the Taipei Airlines Association and Chou Kuo-Shing, vice general manager of the China Airlines Ltd., hoped that the local authorities would provide more convenience to encourage more mainland residents to visit the island and promote the passenger load factor of Taiwan airliners.

After the regular cross-Straits flight services were launched, most of the passengers were from the island and the number of mainland passengers were very limited, they said at a meeting on promoting mainland-Taiwan economic and trade cooperation.

Representatives from the tourism industry said it usually took too long for mainland residents to apply for visiting Taiwan and the procedures were very complicated.

They said very few mainland people had broken laws on the island and related departments should loosen controls over tourist groups from the mainland.

They also noted that under current regulations, when mainland tourists were ill or dead in the island, their relatives had to wait for too long to come to Taiwan because of complicated procedures.

The meeting, presided over by Ting Shou-Chung, a public representative of the Kuomintang, aimed at expanding cross-Straits economy and trade cooperation and improving regulations on mainland businessmen and professionals' visiting to the island.

Ting said the mainland was Taiwan's most important trade partner and called upon local authorities to listen to the voice of businessmen.

According to the island's authorities, more than 9,900 mainland businessmen and professionals visited Taiwan in 2008 while the number from January to September this year already hit 135,000.

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