Faced by irregularities running into billions of dollars in the use
of government funds, China is to adopt financial scrutiny methods,
which have been partly modeled on the budgetary supervision system
operated by the US Congress, a senior national lawmaker revealed
Thursday.
Lu
Baifu, a newly elected member of the Finance and Economic Committee
(FEC) of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), confirmed this
in an exclusive interview with China Daily.
Government auditors examined some 104,000 government institutions
in the first 11 months last year. And they found various problems
amounting to 205 billion yuan (US$24.7 billion), according to
statistics from the National Audit Office.
Lu
said China's top legislature has vowed to intensify supervision
work to curb a rapid expansion in suspect government expenditure
and rampant financial corruption.
He
said his committee will strengthen its examination and supervision
on the implementation of national budgets and budgetary management
in all central government bodies and for major projects.
"Strengthening the NPC's economic supervision role is a vital and
significant job for the country's supreme power organ," said Lu,
who has been an FEC member of the Ninth NPC for the past five
years.
As
one of the NPC's 10 subordinate committees, the FEC is in charge of
discussing economy and finance-related affairs and passing relevant
laws when the full parliament is not in session.
During its five-year term, the lawmaker said, the Ninth NPC made
outstanding progress in improving the examination and approval of
central and local budgets as well as budgetary management in
central government bodies.
The Standing Committee of the Ninth NPC enacted two laws in this
field and required a total of 26 central government departments to
submit their departmental budgets for examination, according to Lu,
who is also deputy director of the China Academy for Financial
Studies.
Despite these achievements, he said, more has to be done to address
some problems that have long been plaguing the drafting and
implementation of both central and local budgets.
First of all, the FEC has little say in examining and approving
extra-budgetary expenditures, which usually total more than 100
billion yuan (US$12.09 billion) each year, Lu said.
The Ministry of Finance usually first earmarks the extra-budgetary
expenditures without notification in advance and then lets the FEC
rubber stamp its decisions.
Lu
said the drafts of central, local and departmental budgets give
only rough outlines and lack details, creating many loopholes for
arbitrary outlays and abuse in use of public funds.
What's worse, the FEC member said, is that, the NPC has failed to
impose effective management over non extra-budgetary spending at
both central and local levels.
Financial experts estimate this stands at half of budgeted
expenditures for the whole country each year.
In
2002, the budgeted expenditure for the whole country was 2.11
trillion yuan (US$255 billion) and the figure for 2003 is 2.3
trillion yuan (US$278 billion).
Lu
said the FEC is planning to order the Ministry of Finance to submit
quarterly budget reports in each financial year instead of giving
only a final report at the end of the financial year.
Meanwhile, all central government organizations will be required to
compile their departmental budgets in detail so that their total
expenditures can be controlled more effectively, he said.
The FEC will also organize special studies of draft budgets for
huge national projects such as the Three Gorges Project, West-East
Gas Pipeline Project and South-North Water Diversion Project.
Budgetary management of these projects will be strengthened.
"Through these measures, we hope to gradually improve the
efficiency of the country's financial budgetary work and better
standardize the expenditures in central government departments," Lu
said.
"In the meantime, runaway corrupt practices resulting from poor
budgetary management systems will also be prevented."
(China Daily March 15, 2003)