China's central government debt slightly down

BEIJING - The balance of China's central government debt stood at 10.65 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) at the end of the first quarter, data from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) showed Monday.

The figure was down by 6.7 billion yuan from that at the end of 2015.

Of the debt, only 113.2 billion yuan was foreign debt, the ministry said in a statement.

China's government debt, which also includes local government debt, represented 41.5 percent of China's GDP at the end of 2015, below the European Union's warning line of 60 percent and major market economies such as Japan and the United States.

The MOF said last month that there is still room for China to raise its debt level by moderately scaling up insurance of treasury bonds and local government bonds, which will help cushion the impact of shrinking social credit on economic growth.

The ministry also said that the revenue of the central government rose 20 percent from April to 799.2 billion yuan in May, while expenditure dropped 22 percent to 615.9 billion yuan.

In May, central government raised a total of 232.9 billion yuan through bonds and loans, up by 67.7 percent from April.