Hong Kong residents made 62.8 million trips to the mainland for business and leisure last year, bringing HK$24.1 billion (US$3.11 billion) of revenue to the mainland, the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong said yesterday.

Personal travel accounted for 64 percent of the entire trips, with business travel taking up the rest, according to the May issue of the Monthly Digest of Statistics, which features consumption expenditure of Hong Kong people traveling to the mainland in 2005.

Of the 40.1 million personal trips, 52 percent were destined for Shenzhen, 42 percent for other places in Guangdong Province and 6 percent to other provinces, suggesting much closer relations between Hong Kong and its neighboring Guangdong Province, the Census and Statistics Department said.

The average expenditure per trip was about HK$600. For overnight trips of a personal nature, the average expenditure per person was about HK$770, while that for one-day trips was around HK$290.