A total of 800 million farmers will be free from agricultural taxes in the year of 2005, according to Jin Renqing, Chinese Minister of finance, in his report on the national fiscal revenue and expenditure in the first five months of 2005 at the sixteenth meeting of the Tenth Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on June 28.

Jin said, based on the implementation of the policy on "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" last year, China will continue to vigorously press ahead with the reform on tax and fee in rural areas this year .

Jin said, up to now, China has exempted 19 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), including Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, from agriculture tax, plus last year's eight provinces, 27 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) will no longer pay agriculture tax this year.

Besides, the taxes will be revoked in 217 counties (cities) in the remaining Hebei, Shandong, Guangxi and Yunnan, which are still being charged of the agriculture tax.

As early as this year's annual session of China's top legislature opened in early March, Premier Wen Jiabao said the central government would earmark 39.6 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) to support local governments in their rural taxation reform, and allocate 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) from the state's risk fund for grain production to subsidize farmers.

This year, as most of the provinces and autonomous regions stopped collecting agriculture tax, the tax revenue will reduce to 1.5 billion yuan (US$180.7 million) or so, down 93 percent from the year-earlier level.

By People's Daily Online