Fee-to-tax Reform Alleviates Farmers' Burden by over 30 Percent

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 10, 2003

Fee-to-tax Reform Alleviates Farmers' Burden by over 30 Percent

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Press Conference on Agriculture, Rural Work Held

Minister of Agriculture Du Qinglin said Monday that the fee-to-tax reforms carried out on a trial basis in 20 provinces and cities have been successful, with farmers' economic burden reduced by over 30 percent.

Du said at a press conference that in 2002 the national averageper capita amount of fees or taxes was 78.7 yuan, down 29.3 yuan from 1997, or an annual average drop of 6.1 percent.

He said that the reform has rationalized the income distribution relations between the state, communities and individuals.

Last year the average net income of Chinese farmers was 2,476 yuan, up 4.8 over the previous year, witnessing a recovering growth after years of swaying.

China to downsize grassroots rural agencies

Du said that China will carry out a series of reforms to streamline government agencies in rural areas, as part of the nationwide effort to alleviate farmers' economic burden. Some township-level agencies will be merged while the others will be downsized.

He said that currently the gap between rural and urban residents is quite big, with the ratio of average incomes between urban and rural residents standing at 3.1: to 1 in 2002. "The actual gap may be bigger," the minister added.

He said that the Chinese government is very much concerned about this problem and has adopted measures to promote agricultural and rural development.

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