MACAO -- A total of 57 institutions in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) offered vocational training courses last year, an increase of six compared with that in 2016, the SAR's statistics service said.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated on Tuesday that a total of 1,685 courses were organized last year, down by 1.9 percent year-on-year. The total number of participants rose by 1.1 percent to 66,500.

Analyzed by course type, business and administration courses had the highest number of participants, accounting for 32.0 percent (21,269) of the total, followed by computing courses at 12.4 percent (8,238) and language courses at 11.3 percent (7,492).

The number of participants attending tourism, gaming and exhibition event courses surged by 128.2 percent year-on-year to 7,327. The overall course completion rate was 82.5 percent, down by 2.1 percentage points.

Among the 1,685 vocational training courses, 748 were organized for enterprises or institutions, up by 9.8 percent year-on-year, which indicated that local enterprises and organizations attached greater importance to vocational training of employees.