June 12, 2012
Translated by Zhu Na

The Chinese government collected a total of 5.27 trillion yuan in fiscal revenue in the first five months of this year, an increase of 12.7 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Finance yesterday. The rate of growth was down 19.3 percentage points from the 32 percent pace of growth registered over the same period in 2011.

Fiscal outlays for the same January to May period reached 4.11 trillion yuan, an increase of 22.4 percent,

Total fiscal revenue for May was 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.1 percent. Of this figure,  699 billion yuan in fiscal revenue was collected by the central government, up 13 percent from last May. While local governments collected 501 billion yuan in revenue, an increase of 13.3 percent when compared to the same period last year.

Total national fiscal revenue includes both tax and non-tax revenue.

The data shows that in May, tax revenue totaled 1.05 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.7 percent.

The Finance Ministry said that the increase in the pace of revenue growth in May when compared to last month's figures, was mainly due to a large jump in corporate income tax from the banking industry.  

In May, fiscal expenditure climbed to 916 billion yuan, an increase of 10.8 percent on the same month of last year.

Of this total national figure, the central government spent 170.7 billion yuan, an increase of 15.4 percent year-on-year and local government spending reached 745.8 billion yuan, an increase of 9.9 percent on the same period last year.

Over the first five months of 2012, China's central government spent 698.5 billion yuan, an increase of 10.9 percent year-on-year. Local government spending over the same period came to 3.41 trillion yuan, up an impressive 25.1 percent.

Compared to the same period of 2011, spending on education, health care and public housing all increased significantly.

For example, the total spending on education for the first five months of the year was 608 billion yuan, an increase of 29.1 percent on the same period last year and health care spending reached 235.8 billion yuan, an increase of 31.4 percent when compared to the Jan-May period last year.

Links and Sources
Southern Weekly: 5月公共财政收支情况公布
The Beijing News: 5月财政收入超1.2万亿
MOF: 2012年5月份公共财政收支情况