Premier Wen pushes for budget transparency
- Source: Global Times
- [09:29 March 30 2010]
- Comments
By Zou Le
Premier Wen Jiabao said China will take bold steps to make the government budget more transparent after critics said information currently provided to the public is not good enough.
"Promote greater openness in budgetary work and all the government expenditures for construction, administration and others should be open to the public, so that people can effectively supervise the government," Wen said.
Wen was speaking at a State Council meeting last week when he made the pledge.
"All government revenues and expenditures will be included in this year's budget compilation," the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Wen stressed that a more advanced and scientific budget compilation system is needed to help provide more specific, clear and transparent data to the public in order to help them understand and learn "where the money comes from and how they are used."
The budget report released by both the central and regional governments was described as "incomprehensive and hard to understand" by some critics.
The just released government budget report by Guangdong Province, which is by far the nation's first and only provincial level budget report, was also called "obscure" by some experts.
Lin Jiang, a professor of tax studies at Sun Yat-sen University, told the Xin Kuaibao Daily that the report failed to offer new details about spending.
"No data from 2007 and 2008 were provided therefore [we are] not able to interpret or assess if the statistics meet certain rules," Lin said.
Lin noted that the report did not include specific details about how much was spent on vehicles or overseas business trips, which most concern the public.
"Another problem is that the majority of government agencies refuse to publicize their budgets despite a law clearly requiring them to do so," Zhou Hanhua, a professor of administrative law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Monday.
The central government began publishing the national fiscal budget last year following the enactment of the Open Government Information Regulations a year earlier that called on the government to publicize the budget, the China Youth Daily said.
The call drew positive responses from some local governments.
The Global Times reported earlier that a township government in Sichuan Province listed every single expense on the website including a 1.5 yuan ($0.22) notebook, earning it the nickname "naked government."
