Commissioner of the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) Xie Xuren announced Tuesday that China's total volume of tax revenue exceeded two trillion yuan (about US$250 billion) and the amount of increase exceeded 300 billion yuan, both of which are new highs.

According to the statistics from the SAT, the total tax revenue that has gone to the state coffer in 2003 reached 2046.1 billion yuan, excluding tariff revenue and agriculture tax revenue, up 20.3 percent or 345.8 billion yuan over the previous year and fulfilling 108.2 percent of the budget revenue of the year.

(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2004)