China has strived to optimize the allocation of its financial resources over the past four months so as to better support critical national strategic tasks and guarantee people's basic livelihoods, data from the Ministry of Finance showed on Monday.

From January to April, China's general public budget expenditure expanded by 3.5 percent year-on-year to 8.95 trillion yuan ($1.24 trillion), contributing 31.3 percent to the annual budget. The growth rate was 0.6 percentage points higher than that in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the country's fiscal expenditure structure has been notably improved. The expenditure on housing security amounted to 265.6 billion yuan, up 7.8 percent year-on-year.

When it comes to the general public budget revenue, the total from January to April was about 8.09 trillion yuan, down 2.7 percent from a year earlier.

After adjusting for special factors — including reductions and delayed collections of some taxes — the revenue's comparable growth was around 2 percent, continuing the positive growth trend.

The country's tax revenue declined by 4.9 percent year-on-year, with a comparable growth of about 0.5 percent after adjusting for special factors. To be specific, the domestic consumption tax and the corporate income tax grew by 8.3 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Besides, the export tax rebates expanded by 18.8 percent to 810.1 billion yuan, which has significantly contributed to the country's exports growth.

liuzizheng@chinadaily.com.cn