BEIJING (AP) — China will impose nationwide a tax on oil and gas drilling and other resource industries to raise money for development in poor western regions, an official said yesterday.

Beijing is carrying out a test of such a tax in its oil-rich western region of Xinjiang and plans to expand it gradually to the whole country, said Du Ying, a vice chairman of the country's planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.

"The reform will clearly increase the local fiscal income of the resource-rich western regions," Du said at a news conference. He gave no timetable for expanding the tax.

The five percent tax in Xinjiang, imposed last month, is part of efforts to develop the desert Muslim region, where ethnic tensions exploded into rioting last July that killed nearly 200 people.

Minority areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet are among China's poorest despite producing a large share of its oil, gas and minerals. A key source of anti-Chinese anger is complaints by local residents that they get little of the wealth extracted by government companies.

Du said the level of the tax, once imposed nationwide, might vary from product to product.

The resource tax reform is part of a new support measures for western China.

The NDRC announced this week that Beijing will invest 682 billion yuan ($101 billion) in 23 projects in 2010 in its western regions.

The resource tax will increase costs for resource producers, said Jing Ulrich, JP Morgan's chairwoman for China equities, in a report to clients.

The tax also might help to ease public frustration at the wealth of China's state-owned oil and other energy companies, which profit from government subsidies and favours.