(Yicai) Sept. 18 -- The scale of China's government procurement fell last year but remained above the threshold of CNY3 trillion (USD422.8 billion) for the eighth consecutive year.

Nationwide government procurement shrank about 3 percent to CNY3.39 trillion last year from the previous one, according to data released by the Ministry of Finance on Sept. 14. The figure fell 3.9 percent in 2022 and 1.6 percent in 2021.

The decline in China's government procurement in the past three years was mainly due to an increased imbalance between fiscal income and expenditure and reduced local government spending.

Engineering procurement accounted for nearly 43 percent of the total last year, followed by services procurement at 35 percent and cargo procurement at 23 percent, MOF data also showed. Services procurement topped cargo procurement for the first time since 2017.

The Chinese government gave full play to its policies supporting green development and small- and medium-sized enterprises in terms of procurement matters last year. In fact, it awarded CNY2.52 trillion worth of procurement contracts to SMEs in 2023, accounting for over 74 percent of the total, according to MOF data.

In July, the State Council released a notice calling for tighter supervision of government procurement. The MOF checked over 6,000 procurement brokers and over 30,000 government procurement projects, focusing on correcting illegal behaviors, such as differential and discriminating bidding clauses and arbitrary fee charging, the ministry said on Sept. 14.

Editors: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione