China's fiscal revenue fell 17.1 percent in January from a year earlier to 613.16 billion yuan (US$89.77 billion), the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Monday.

The ministry attributed the decline to slowing economic growth,which affected business profitability, and wide-ranging tax cuts to boost the economy.

Another reason for the steep decrease was that the number of working days was 5 less than the same month last year because of the Spring Festival holiday, the MOF said.

The country's tax revenue dropped by 16.7 percent from January 2008 to 563.9 billion yuan last month.

Duty revenue declined 19.3 percent while takings from stock stamp tax shrank 95.7 percent.

In an effort to boost the equities market, the government cut the share trading stamp tax from 0.3 percent to 0.1 percent in April last year and scrapped the stamp tax on stock purchases in September.

China's fiscal revenue reached 6.13 trillion yuan for the wholeof 2008, up 19.5 percent from the previous year, according to preliminary statistics released by the MOF.

(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2009)