Solid economic expansion will lift China's fiscal revenue to more than 5 trillion yuan (about US$675.5 billion) this year, a rise of 27.23 percent compared with 3.93 trillion yuan last year, the chief economist with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Yao Jingyuan has predicted.

 

The projections are quite conservative as the rise in the first three quarters stood at 31.4 percent, up 6.8 percentage points from the same period of last year. The growth for the first half was 30.6 percent. The abolishment of agricultural tax cost the government roughly 125 billion yuan (about US$16.9 billion) in fiscal revenue last year.

 

"Fundamentally speaking, current taxation levy and overall scale have revealed the positive growth of the Chinese economy," said Yao at the 10th China Summit for Growth in Beijing.

 

He identified the year's marked economic achievements as a solid growth in grain crops output which would hit 500 billion kilograms, possibly the fourth high since 2004, across-the-board profits in all 39 industrial sectors as well as rising individual income and better employment prospects.

 

Citing NBS figures, Yao said that from January to August, the profits of all China's 39 industrial sectors have grown 37 percent on average over the same period last year.

 

The official maintained that current consumer price rises led by foodstuffs were only structural rather than across-the-board. As the Engel's coefficient -- the share of income spent on food -- was high in the less developed interior, northwestern Qinghai Province was worst affected by the price rises, followed by southwestern Guizhou Province.

 

The price hikes in metropolis like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou were relative low, Yao said.

 

To remedy the situation, the Ministry of Finance has offered stipends directly to farmers while local governments were required to subsidize the expenditure of school canteens and residential users of liquified gas. The figures, however, are yet to be disclosed.

 

The biggest problems facing China's economy, Yao said, remain the excess growth in fixed assets investment, credit and loan as well as trade surplus.

 

On a separate occasion, top statistician Xie Fuzhan of the NBS has predicted that China's consumer price index was expected to rise 4.5 percent to 4.6 percent for the whole of 2007, indicating a moderate and tolerable inflation.

 

Both of the two agreed that China's economy was able to maintain a steady growth. Yao said the year's GDP growth could stay above 11.5 percent, a double-digit growth for the fifth year in a row.

 

Another latest report released by the Economic Research Institute of the Renmin University of China said that there was still room for the Chinese economy to advance as consumption, investment and growth still have potential to grow.

 

China's GDP growth is expected to stay double-digit, ranging from 10-11 percent for three years, said the report.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2007)