Chinese Ministry of Finance said on Friday that the country's fiscal revenue rose 34 percent year-on-year to reach 1.06 trillion yuan ($163.6 billion) in May, boosted by the settlement of last year's corporate income taxes.

May's growth rate accelerated more quickly than that of April by nearly 7 percentage points, but was still down from the 36 percent increase posted for the first two months of this year, when surging imports boosted fiscal revenues, the MOF said in a statement on its website.

Excluding contributions by last year's corporate income tax settlement, May's fiscal revenue grew by 25 percent year-on-year, lower than April's 27.2 percent and March's 26.7 percent.

Fiscal revenue growth is expected to slow even further over the coming months, the MOF said.

In May, the central government collected 618.64 billion yuan, and local governments gathered 442.59 billion yuan, according to the MOF's statement.

The May data brought China's fiscal revenue for the first five months of this year to 4.68 trillion yuan, up 32 percent from a year earlier, it said.

Fiscal revenue in China includes taxes, administrative fees and other sources of government income, such as fines and income from state-owned assets.

The country's fiscal spending, however, grew much faster in May, with an expenditure of 826.8 billion yuan in the month, up 42.9 percent year-on-year, according to MOF.

Taking the first five months together, the country's fiscal spending rose 30.9 percent from a year earlier to 3.36 trillion yuan, up 30.9 percent from a year earlier.

According to the MOF statement, 479.25 billion yuan of the public fiscal expenditure in the first five months was spent on social security and employment, 470.78 billion yuan on education, 277.61 billion yuan on agriculture, forestry and water resources, 238.07 billion yuan on urban and rural community affairs, 179.48 billion yuan on medical services and 73.42 billion yuan on affordable housing.

(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2011)