China's auditors have uncovered several local officials' modus operandi of faking economic figures to show high growth rate when the real numbers were much lower, according to Xinhua.

The auditors discovered that the fraud, which has been going on for the past few years in China's northeast region, after local officials were asked to explain the dramatic economic freefall in their areas.

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Local officials in the region reportedly admitted that they had been significantly overstating the economic figures from the domain including GDP, household income, and fiscal revenue.

An auditor was quoted saying that had the past data not been inflated, the current growth rate would not have shown such dramatic fall.

Liaoning province registered 9.5 percent in GDP growth in the first three quarters three years ago. Its current GDP figure in the same period this year is just 2.7 percent.

Jilin province's GDP growth was reported at 12 percent three years ago but its current rate is 6.3 percent.

Reports indicate that the discovery of the inflated figures came about after auditors found out that the GDP growth of the three provinces ranked lowest nationwide.

Local officials allegedly padded local investment figures by at least 20 percent, which roughly translated to 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion).

The auditors said that if the financial reports of these provinces were to be believed, the GDP growth of a single county would have surpassed that of Hong Kong.

An audit by the National Audit Office showed that one county in Liaoning province inflated its GDP growth up to 127 percent higher than the actual figure.

TagsNational Audit Office, GDP growth, fiscal revenues, Liaoning, Jilin province, Northeast provinces