China Reports Steady Budgetary Revenue GrowthChina saw steady growth of budgetary revenue and improved structure of budgetary expenditures in the first half of this year, a senior official said Tuesday.Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng said that China reaped in 624 billion yuan of fiscal revenue during the January-June period, 94. 6 billion yuan or 17.9 percent more than in the same period last year. Xiang told a national work meeting on finance that budgetary expenditures totaled 583.8 billion yuan in the first half of the year, 119 billion yuan or 25.6 percent more than in the same period last year. By the end of June, China had achieved 50.6 percent of the targeted total of fiscal revenue for the year, an increase of 6.6 percentage points and 1.6 percentage points over the same period of 1998 and 1999 respectively. Increasing investment demand, growing imports, surging stock market and improving profits of enterprises combined to boost tax revenue by 81.9 billion yuan, accounting for a 86.6-percent increase of fiscal revenue. Expenditure in social security grew by 1.95 times over the same period last year, while the expenditure for public security, procuratorates and courts rose 22.9 percent. Expenditure in subsidies and funding of scientific and technological jumped 35.1 percent and 12.7 percent respectively. Expenditures in educational and agricultural projects surged 18 percent and 12.8 percent respectively. Xiang pointed out that implementation of the budget is still facing problems such as unstable revenue growth in different regions, tax fraud, shortage of fiscal funds and difficulties in pushing ahead budgetary reform. He said that some localities in China saw negative growth of fiscal revenue in the first half of the year. He noted that revenue of consumption tax grew only 5.5 percent over the previous six months, 6.2 percentage points lower than the growth rate in the same period last year. Only 5.4 billion yuan of personal income tax paid on interest of savings deposits has been put into the treasury's coffer, accounting for 21.7 percent of the targeted amount for the year. According to Xiang, overdue tax of enterprises bloated to 32.3 billion yuan by the end of June, six billion yuan more than in the beginning of the year. In the same time, tariff payment frauds became increasingly rampant, according to Xiang. He said that the country will continue to carry out a pro- active fiscal policy in the second half of the year to secure a sustainable, rapid and healthy economic growth. |
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