China’s finance ministry condemned northeastern Liaoning province’s admission this week that it inflated economic data as a “severe breach of national law,” but also praised local officials for their integrity and desire to address existing problems, Caixin reports. The Liaoning governor admitted that economic data it supplied to Beijing from 2011 to 2014 were inflated, following suspicions about China’s most sluggish provincial economy. Fiscal revenues were exaggerated by around 20% overall, while figures were bloated to twice the size of reality in certain counties, official probes found. “Liaoning’s falsified figures have thrown off central authorities’ judgment of the economic situation, misguiding policies and misleading allocations of state funds to the province,” said the Ministry of Finance in a written statement on Friday, its first response to the scandal. The ministry criticized the exaggerated numbers as a “severe breach of national law.”