BEIJING: China’s fiscal revenue in April rose 14.4 percent year on year to 1.55 trillion yuan (US$238 billion), the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The total for the first four months rose 8.6 percent to 5.44 trillion yuan, it said.
In the first quarter of the year, China’s economy expanded 6.7 percent year on year, slowing further from the previous three months. In the face of continued economic headwinds, China has made supply-side reform an economic priority, and tax cuts to lower the cost of business are a major policy option, putting further pressure on revenue growth.
“The foundation for revenue growth remains unsteady as downward pressures on China’s growth remain and economic restructuring still faces many challenges,” the ministry said.
The central government collected 644.3 billion yuan in fiscal revenue, up 2.4 percent year on year, while the total collected by local governments rose 24.7 percent to 908 billion yuan.
Due to a warming housing market in big cities, real estate business taxes went up 11 percent year on year to 31.5 billion yuan. Natural resource taxes fell 23.5 percent due to sluggish crude oil and coal prices.
In April, fiscal spending rose 4.5 percent to 1.31 trillion yuan, taking expenditure for the January-April period to 5.1 trillion yuan.
To cushion the blow from sluggish revenue growth, the government plans to increase its deficit-to-GDP ratio to 3 percent this year from 2.3 percent last year.
