Chinese tobacco firms' tax payments surge

China's tobacco firms paid 864.9 billion yuan (137.7 billion U.S. dollars) in taxes in 2012, up 15.7 percent year on year, according to new official data.

The industry also handed over 716.6 billion yuan in profits to the government last year, a 19-percent rise from a year earlier, Jiang Chengkang, head of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, said at a national work conference on Thursday.

Jiang said the tobacco industry is turning greener. Energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of value-added output fell 14.8 percent year on year to 25.3 kg of standard coal in 2012.

The industry's total chemical oxygen demand and sulfur dioxide emissions decreased 3.7 percent and 10.9 percent respectively from a year earlier, the official added.

The Chinese government made a public smoking ban one of its goals in the 2011-2015 period. Some cities have already enacted local legislation on public smoking control.

From 2006 to 2010, the combined taxes and profits created by China's tobacco industry jumped 139 percent to 604.5 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of about 19 percent.