The Chinese government's fiscal revenue in the first five months reached 2.7 trillion yuan (US$400 billion), down 6.7 percent or 195.6 billion yuan over the same period last year, Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren said Wednesday.

Xie revealed the figure in a report to the ninth session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

Of the total, the central government collected about 1.4 trillion yuan, down 14 percent over the same period of 2007. This accounted for 39.6 percent of the annual budget.

Local governments collected the other 1.3 trillion yuan, up 2.9 percent, which accounted for 42.4 percent of the annual budget.

Xie cited four factors for the drop in fiscal revenues: a fall in international trade due to the global economic downturn; a fall in revenue value relative to the consumer prices index (CPI) and the producer price index (PPI); structural tax reduction polices; the slowdown in China's economic growth.

He said in the first five months, fiscal expenditure nationwide amounted to almost 2.25 trillion yuan, up 488.7 billion yuan or 27.8 percent over the same period last year, accounting for 29.5 percent of the budgeted figure.

Central government expenditure totaled 459.3 billion yuan, up 21.4 percent, while local governments spent 1.79 trillion yuan, up 29.5 percent, he said.

Xie said the outstanding national debt reached 5.3 trillion at the end of last year, which was within the 5.5-trillion limit in the annual budget.

The Chinese government's fiscal revenue reached about 6.13 trillion yuan (US$900 billion) last year, 1 trillion yuan or 19.5 percent more than 2007.

(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2009)