The total tax revenue from China's domestic private enterprises in the past five years reached 770.56 billion yuan (US$96.3 billion) reports the State Administration of Taxation.

According to statistics released by the administration on Monday the total tax revenue is nearly eight times that of the previous five-year period between 1996 and 2000.

The administration said in the past five years the tax revenue from private enterprises reached a record annual growth rate of 45.3 percent with its share of the national total tax revenue increasing from 2.2 percent during 1996-2000 to 7.1 percent.

The tax revenue of China's state-owned enterprises only increased 6.9 percent to about 3.1 trillion yuan (US$387.5 billion) in the past five years with its share of the national total dropping from 52.3 percent to 28.3 percent.

Officials said the change was a result of China's economic structure reforms through which a number of state-owned enterprises changed into joint-stock or joint-venture companies.

But the administration acknowledged that the public sector is still in a dominant position in China's economic structure with its total tax revenue in the past five years amounting to 1.32 trillion yuan (US$165.4 billion), 43.7 percent of the national total.

The public sector includes the country's state-owned firms, collective and all state-holding enterprises, cooperative ventures, joint-stock businesses and ventures.

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2006)