An increase in China's fiscal revenue in May indicates a recovery in the economy and leave the government more room to employ fiscal measures to boost it, Tuesday's China Daily quoted experts.

The country's fiscal revenue in May rose 4.8 percent year on year to 656.95 billion yuan (96.05 billion U.S. dollars), reversing the downward trend of the past few months, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said yesterday.

Aggregate central and local government revenues in the first five months stood at 2.71 trillion yuan, down 6.7 per cent from a year earlier.

"The rise in May is a signal that the economy is recovering. Hopefully, starting from May, the national fiscal revenue would begin to show positive growth," the newspaper quoted Jia Kang, president of the Institute of Fiscal Science, Ministry of Finance, as saying.

Another expert from the same institute attributed the reason of May's rise to the launch of many projects included in the 4-trillion yuan stimulus plan.

"Though the stimulus plan was announced in November, many of projects were actually launched in spring, and is now starting to contribute to the economic growth," said Zhao Quanhou, a senior researcher at the institute, told the newspaper.

Experts believe that May revenue increase gives much room for the treasury to use more fiscal measures to bolster the economy, but there still is huge pressure on the government to realize an 8per cent revenue growth in 2009.

"The key period is from June to October. We need to watch closely the figures in the coming months, and see if the economy is really starting to recover," said Zhao.

China expects to see a 8 per cent fiscal revenue growth in 2009,much slower than previous years. Its revenue increased by 18.8 percent in 2008 and 32.4 per cent in 2007.