The Chinese government has announced that farmers in Northeast Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces will pay no agricultural taxes this year.

The agricultural tax rate will be cut by 3% in 11 provinces, including Hebei and Inner-Mongolia. Last month, China announced plans to completely phase out agriculture taxes over five years. Statistics show each Chinese farmer paid, on average, 20 yuan, or about 2.4 US dollars less in taxes last year than in the previous year. Tax cuts have saved China's farmers a total amount of around 64.8 billion yuan, about 7.8 billion US dollars.