China fiscal revenue up 13% in May

BEIJING - China's fiscal revenue in the first five months of the year rose 12.7 percent from the same period a year ago to nearly 5.3 trillion yuan ($841.3 billion), the Ministry of Finance said Monday.

The increase was down by 19.3 percentage points compared to the January- May period last year.

The ministry attributed the slower growth to economic weakness, slower price rises, dwindling corporate profits and tax cuts to adjust revenue distribution.

China's fixed-asset investment rose 20.1 percent year-on-year to 10.89 trillion yuan in the first five months, 0.1 percentage point lower than the figure for the first four months. It marked the third consecutive monthly slowdown, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Saturday.

Other key measures such as the industrial value-added output and retail sales both saw slower growth in the first five months as the country's economy cooled.

The country's inflation, however, unexpectedly eased to a 23-month low due to falling food prices and the base effect, said the NBS.

From January to April, profits of the industrial enterprises of scale -- referring to enterprises with annual sales revenue exceeding 5 million yuan each -- declined 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the NBS.

In May alone, the country's fiscal revenue reached 1.2 trillion yuan, up 13.1 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

The monthly growth compares to a 6.9-percent increase in April. The faster increase in May was driven by an aggressive profit growth of the banking sector which was due to file its 2011 annual corporate income tax in the month, the ministry said.

Tax revenue nationwide climbed 9.4 percent year-on-year in the first five months. The growth was down 21.4 percentage points compared with the same period last year, the ministry said.