Fiscal expenditures stood at 1.79 trillion yuan in the first six months, rising 22.7 percent from the same period last year and comprising 38.5 percent of the year's national budget.

Local governments spent the majority, or 1.37 trillion yuan, up 27.5 percent, while the Central Government spent 422.95 billion yuan, an increase of 9.5 percent year on year.

Finance Minister Jin Renqing attributed the fiscal revenue growth partly to rapid increases in revenue from income taxes and import duties on the back of the booming macroeconomy, which grew 11.5 percent in the first half of this year.

Jin also pointed out that there were some abnormal factors, such as soaring tax revenue in some overheated sectors including industry, real estate, stock market, credit and investment.

Real Estate Price Skyrockets

In June, real estate prices in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities rose 7.1 percent year on year, the fastest growth this year, according to a joint survey by the National Development and Reform Commission and National Bureau of Statistics.

Prices of newly built commercial houses grew 7.4 percent year on year. Among the 70 cities, Beihai, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Beijing had the highest growth rates, with 15.5 percent, 13.9 percent, 11.3 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

This year, the government has already increased land supply to rein in the real estate market, said Gan Zangchun, Deputy State Superintendent General of Land. In the first five months of this year, supply of land for housing rose 35.5 percent from the year before.

To curb housing prices, the government should also increase the effective housing supply--building more houses for mid-to-low income residents as soon as possible, suggested Niu Fengrui, Director of the Institute of Urban Development and Environment, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Policy Bank Goes Abroad

The China Development Bank (CDB), one of China's three policy banks, signed a stake-purchase agreement and a strategic cooperation memorandum with British financial institution Barclays PLC in Beijing on July 23.

According to the deal, CDB will initially invest $3 billion to purchase a 3-percent stake in Barclays and will have a position on Barclays' board of directors. The money CDB injected is to support Barclays' bid for ABN Amro. If Barclays succeeds in acquiring ABN Amro, CDB will further invest $8-10.5 billion, raising its stake in Barclays to more than 5 percent.

Under the partnership, Barclays will bring its management and expertise to CDB and provide training for CDB staff.

Guo Tianyong, banking professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics, said a Chinese policy bank partnering with a world-renowned bank with a long history and advanced management practices can facilitate the transformation of the policy bank into a commercially operated financial institution.

Numbers of the Week 6.29 million There were 6.29 million newly created job opportunities in the first half of 2007, said the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. During this period, 2.79 million laid-off workers found new jobs while 740,000 people struggling to find work were employed from January to June. By the end of June, the registered unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 4.1 percent, a decline of 0.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year. 162 million China had had 162 million Web users by the end of June, said the China Internet Network Information Center. Among the total, the number of broadband netizens was 122 million and that of mobile phone netizens 44.3 million. In the first half, there were 100 new Web users every minute on average and there was one netizen among every four mobile phone subscribers. Currently 1.21 million Web sites operate in China. 501.6 million The number of mobile phone users had reached 501.6 million by the end of June, according to the Ministry of Information Industry. This means that for every 100 people, 38.3 had mobile phones. The number of mobile phone users increased by 40.56 million since the end of last year, an average of 6.76 million a month. The total number of text messages sent by cell phones was 279 billion, up 37.5 percent year on year. Meanwhile, fixed-phone users only grew by 4.86 million, for a total of 372 million.