Baotou admits ‘fake’ data, revises down fiscal revenue

A northern industrial city in China said its 2017 fiscal revenue was significantly less than it had earlier estimated partly due to “fake” additions, making a revision just days after reports of similar incidents fueled skepticism over official data.

Baotou in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region revised down its previously estimated fiscal revenue for 2017 by nearly 50 percent in an annual work report, a copy of which was published on the Baotou government’s website.

The Baotou city government said in the report that the revision was due to factors including “fake additions.” It did not say how the additions came about or who was responsible.

Days earlier, the governments of Inner Mongolia and North China’s Tianjin said their fiscal and economic data for 2016 had been overstated.

“We have been trying to change our mind-set and change the course of our development model,” the Baotou government said, while pledging to tame government borrowings in part by halting debt-burdened public projects.

Baotou was forced to halt an ambitious subway construction project last year after the central government questioned its ability to finance the debt.

Inner Mongolia cut its industrial output figure for 2016 by 40 percent, the Xinhua News Agency reported on January 3.

It also said fiscal revenue for that year ought to be 26 percent less than initially stated.

The 2016 GDP of Tianjin’s Binhai New Area – a special economic zone – was actually about a third smaller than previously announced, according to a commentary in the official People’s Daily on Monday.

The revelations of data fraud come amid a campaign led by the central government to crack down on risky lending, aimed partly at curbing runaway local government debt.