BEIJING, June 28 (Xinhua) -- The fiscal revenue of the Chinese government surged 144.97 billion yuan year-on-year to 646.26 billion yuan in the first five months of the year, but a government official warned that the growth rate could be lower in the latter half of the year.
Minister of Finance Xiang Huaicheng told the on-going 22nd session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) Thursday that budget expenditure totaled 532.42 billion yuan in the period.
He said that the budget surplus for January-May was 113.84 billion yuan, more than twice the figure for the same period of last year.
Xiang said that the rapid increase of fiscal revenue was due to healthy economic growth so far this year. Corporate income tax revenue grew by 73.2 percent year-on-year during the period, while personal income tax grew by 56.7 percent.
However, he said that the imbalance of revenue growth among different regions and the slowdown of the world economy are likely to drag down the growth rate of fiscal revenue in the latter half of the year.
Xiang noted that the gap of fiscal growth between some areas widened to over 30 percentage points in the first five months of the year. More than 1,000 counties around the country had yet to pay a total of 25.3 billion yuan worth of wages overdue to local government employees. In addition, the global economic slowdown will have an even greater impact on the country's economy and exports in the latter half of the year.
He said that these factors will slow down the growth rate of fiscal revenue.
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