China's Social Security Fund Management Center plans to publicize regular reports on the collection and utilization of funds this year to avoid a repeat of September's high-profile scandal in Shanghai.

"The move will place social security management work under public scrutiny. The general public has the right to know how their nest egg has been spent and how much is available to them," deputy director Pi Dehai of the center under the Ministry of Labor and Social Security told Xinhua on Thursday.

"They should also have an idea of how the government manages the massive stockpile to protect its value," Pi said.

On the sidelines of the 2007 work conference of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Pi promised that this year the center and its local branches would implement relevant fund management and accounting regulations and subject themselves to scrutiny from auditing and finance authorities.

A major task during the year was to "increase the transparency" of the social security fund management, he said.

"Keeping greedy hands at bay" has become a common phrase among the Chinese people especially after the auditing authorities reported that 7.1 billion yuan (US$900 million) of the country's nearly two trillion yuan social security funds had been embezzled last year.

The misappropriation of social security funds was highlighted in September by the Shanghai scandal, involving 3.2 billion yuan of city funds, which brought down Chen Liangyu, secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC).

China has carried out five nationwide audits of social security funds since 1998, revealing embezzlement in 16 of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the mainland in 2004 and 1.7 billion yuan misappropriated in 2005.

Chen Liang, a senior official with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, has attributed the widespread embezzlement to inadequate laws, insufficient transparency in fund management and inadequate public supervision.

(Xinhua News Agency January 19, 2007)