A senior Chinese legislator has urged the government to use the extra fiscal revenue beyond this year's budget to finance public services, improve people's livelihood and reduce the fiscal deficit.
"The government must make a special budget for these extr amoney ranging from 700 billion (about 95 billion U.S. dollars) to 800 billion yuan and implement it upon the legislature's approval," said Jiang Zhenghua, deputy chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.
The government could take advantage of drastic rises in fiscal revenue to increase the capital input in public services such associal securities, re employment, medicare, sanitation and housing subsidies and bankroll primary education in rural areas, Jiangwas quoted as saying by Monday's China Securities Journal.
Jia Kang, director of the Research Institute for Fiscal Scienceunder the Ministry of Finance, predicted earlier this month thatthis year's fiscal revenue might reach 5.1 trillion yuan, up 1.2 trillion, or 31 percent over the previous year.
The 2007 fiscal revenue was budgeted at 4.4 trillion yuan (about 598 billion U.S. dollars) compared with an expenditure of4.65 trillion yuan (about 631 billion U.S. dollars).
The government has adopted a prudent fiscal policy since 2003, with the country's fiscal deficit rate continuously falling from2.9 percent in 2003 to nearly 1.1 percent this year. Meanwhile,the country's national fiscal revenue more than doubled from twotrillion yuan in 2003 to four trillion yuan in 2006.
This year, the central government channeled 31.276 billion yuan into health expenditures, up 86.8 percent over the previous year. A new rural cooperative medical insurance system, aimed at helpingfarmers fund visits to the doctor, will expand to more than 80percent of the nation's counties.
In addition, the government put 223.5 billion yuan intocompulsory education in the rural areas this year, up 39.5 percent from last year. All children will be entitled to 9-year free compulsory education in rural China by the end of 2007.
The Chinese Ministry of Finance (MOF) decided to issue 1.55 trillion yuan of special T-bond this June, but officials with MOF said the issue did not mean an increase in fiscal deficit because the money would be used for the funding of the China Investment Corporation, aimed at increasing revenue.
"More promising large-scale enterprises will be encouraged tolist on the capital market," Jiang, the deputy chairman. He added," The capital market system construction will be advanced and thefinancial channels of enterprises will be expanded to prevent big fluctuations in the stock market."
Source:Xinhua
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