Growing difficulty balancing budget

Xie said government funds should be used efficiently as the government carried out an active fiscal policy to support public investment while cutting taxes.
To stimulate the economy, the government has raised export tax rebates three times since July, increased farm subsidies and endedthe value-added tax for equipment purchases -- a move that's expected to reduce companies' tax bills by 120 billion yuan (about 17.4 billion U.S. dollars) a year.
Moreover, the threshold for individual income tax, which now stands at 2,000 yuan per month, is likely to rise.
Although 2008 fiscal revenue grew an estimated 19 percent from 2007 to some 6 trillion yuan, the economic slowdown, falling corporate profits and tax cuts drove down fiscal revenue in the second half of last year.

Macao's inflation drops

The figures showed that the increment of the composite CPI for December 2008 stood at 125.78, with the price indices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, health, and clothing and footwear went up by 14.35 percent, 13.69 percent and 9.39 percent respectively.
Among the subgroups of food and non-alcoholic beverages, notable increase was observed in the prices of rice, canned meat, fresh-water fish, edible oil and vegetables.
Meanwhile, the indices of transport and communication dropped by 8.15 percent and 6.86 percent respectively, attributable to the bus-fare subsidy provided by the government of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), falling gasoline prices, lower prices of mobile phones and reduced charges for mobile phone services, the DSEC said.