China's fiscal revenue up 15.8% in first two months

BEIJING - China's fiscal revenue rose 15.8 percent year-on-year to 3.66 trillion yuan ($577.3 billion) in the first two months of 2018, official data showed Wednesday.

The growth was much faster than the 7.5-percent rise registered in 2017, according to the Ministry of Finance website.

The central government collected more than 1.82 trillion yuan in fiscal revenue, up 19.1 percent year-on-year, while local governments saw fiscal revenue expand 12.7 percent to 1.83 trillion yuan.

During the January-February period, fiscal spending rose 16.7 percent year-on-year to 2.9 trillion yuan. Expenditure on transportation surged 55.7 percent to 147.5 billion yuan.

The ministry attributed the sharp rise to influences from the Spring Festival holiday, which means the future trend has yet to be seen.

With the economy on a firm footing and fiscal revenue increasing, China lowered its fiscal deficit target to 2.6 percent of GDP for 2018, down by 0.4 percentage points compared with 2017, the first drop since 2013.

The government deficit is projected to be 2.38 trillion yuan, with a central government deficit of 1.55 trillion yuan and local government deficit of 0.83 trillion yuan

Despite a lower deficit-to-GDP ratio, China has raised the budget for this year's general public expenditure by 7.6 percent to 21 trillion yuan, higher than a 6.1 percent rise in budget revenue.