BEIJING, July 22 (Reuters) – China’s fiscal revenue rose 4.7% in the first half of 2026 from a year earlier, the finance ministry said on Wednesday, an acceleration from growth of 4% seen in the January-May period.
Fiscal revenue totalled 12.1 trillion yuan ($1.8 trillion) in the January-June period, the data showed, with tax revenue growing 5.3% year-on-year and non-tax revenue expanding 2.3%.
Fiscal expenditure increased 1.5% year-on-year in the first half to 14.3 trillion yuan, picking up pace from a 0.8% gain in the first five months, the data showed.
China will implement a proactive fiscal policy and support effective investment and consumption, finance ministry official Tang Zaifu told a press conference on Wednesday.
China’s economy expanded at its slowest pace in more than three years in the second quarter as sluggish consumption overshadowed strong manufacturing and exports.
China’s revenue from government land sales tumbled 31.5% to 977.8 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, worsening from a 28.7% drop in the January-May period.
Local governments in China have traditionally depended heavily on sales of land-use rights to developers for revenue. However, a prolonged real estate downturn since mid-2021 has severely strained such income.
China will strengthen the management of local government debt and speed up the allocation of funds, another official, Zhao Zeyong, told the press conference.
He added that local governments had issued special bonds worth 2.07 trillion yuan in the first half, accounting for around 47% of the annual quota.
($1 = 6.7724 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Shi Bu, Yukun Zhang and Kevin Yao; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Edwina Gibbs)
