At the same time, the expenditure hit 704.5 billion yuan (about US$85.08), representing an increase of 20.7 percent over the same period of last year, a national conference on financial work was told.

"China has basically maintained a sound balance of fiscal income and expenditure in the first half of this year while the national economy continued its ongoing growth," said Xiang Huaicheng, minister of finance.

The expenditure increase rates were high for major national infrastructure projects, agriculture, social securities, and education expenses and for the improvement of facilities of judiciaries and welfare of their employees.

Xiang said that at present, the slow-down of the global economy and the import volume of developed countries like the United States will have an inevitable influence on China's economic development this year, including the fiscal income of the latter half of this year.

"China must try much harder to develop its economics, increase input, speed up consumption, well organize the income work and energetically economize the expenses," he said.

He also stressed that the pro-active fiscal policy should be further carried out to guarantee the rapid increase rate of the national economics and the welfare of the people, and to promote the adjustment of the economic structure.

(Shanghai Daily 07/15/2001)