China's fiscal revenue growth decelerates in H1

BEIJING - China's fiscal revenues for the first half of the year grew 12.2 percent year on year to nearly 6.4 trillion yuan (1.01 trillion US dollars), the Ministry of Finance said Friday.

The growth was 19 percentage points lower than that of the same period last year, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

In June alone, fiscal revenues reached 1.1 trillion yuan, up 9.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the ministry.

The ministry attributed the slower increase to weak economic growth,  lower inflation, the declining profits of enterprises and structural tax reduction.

China's economy expanded 7.6 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2012, marking the sixth consecutive slowdown quarter and the lowest growth rate since the third quarter of 2009, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

The country's inflation rate, meanwhile, eased to a 29-month low of 2.2 percent in June, according to NBS data.

Tax revenues nationwide climbed 9.8 percent year on year to 5.5 trillion yuan in the first half, down 19.8 percentage points compared with the same period last year, the ministry said.

In the same period, China's central fiscal revenues rose 10 percent year-on-year to 3.18 trillion yuan, while that of local governments was up 14.4 percent to nearly 3.2 trillion yuan.

The country's fiscal expenditures totaled 5.39 trillion yuan in the first six months of the year, up 21.3 percent from a year ago, said the ministry.

Revenues from value-added taxes, which make up a major part of total tax revenues, rose 8.1 percent year on year during the January-June period ago to 1.34 trillion yuan, it said.

The low growth was also the result of a slowdown in industrial growth, consumer price growth and tax cuts, it added.

The ministry noted a 9.6-percent growth in business tax revenues in the first half, as that of the financial sector jumped 37.2 percent on rising income from loan interest.

Meanwhile, business tax revenues from the property sector declined 8.5 percent due to shrinking sales of commercial housing. But in June, business tax revenues from real estate transactions rebounded 23.6 percent from a year earlier.

The ministry also pointed out that in the first six months, revenues for China's government-managed funds shrank 20.8 percent to 1.52 trillion yuan, dragged down by declining land sales.

Revenues from land sales slid 27.5 percent year on year to 1.14 trillion yuan, said the ministry.

The slowdown also led to a drop in expenditures for government-managed funds, which were down 14.7 percent to 1.36 trillion yuan, it said.