China govt struggling to meet fiscal target

BEIJING - China may struggle to make this year's fiscal revenue target, the finance minister warned on Tuesday.

The central treasury received 2.9 trillion yuan ($472 billion) from January to May, a year-on-year growth of 6.3 percent and 0.7 percentage points lower than the budgeted target, said Lou Jiwei, when briefing lawmakers on the final accounts for 2013.

This year's budgeted growth in central fiscal revenue is 7 percent.

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Difficulties lie in the downward pressure on the economy and the program to replace business tax with value-added tax (VAT) in some service sectors, which will reduce tax revenue to some degree, he explained.

Despite the poor central performance, total national fiscal revenue has reached 6.12 trillion yuan, up 8.8 percent and higher than the 8 percent budgeted for.

"Economic growth is stable and performance remains in a reasonable range," according to Lou. "The general situation has met expectations."

The State Council report was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) at its ongoing bi-monthly session, presided over by Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Slower fiscal revenue growth in 2013

According to the report, the central treasury had an annual revenue of 6.02 trillion yuan in 2013, up 7.2 percent from 2012.

Although the actual revenue in 2013 was higher than the budgeted one, the annual growth was lower than 9.4 percent in 2012 and 20.8 percent in 2011.