"Government budget, definitely a state affair, should be brought under the most rigid, detailed supervision."
This is highlighted in written proposals by Li Xiaofang to China's top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), during the 10-day NPC annual session scheduled to close the upcoming Monday.
Li is a NPC deputy and deputy director of the Rice Institute under Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
In her proposals, Li suggested the NPC extend the time limit for deliberation of the draft budget when it is in session and preside over one more deliberation and check of the budget with the involvement of NPC deputies interested in the review.
This in fact gives expression to the practice proven successful in southern Guangdong Province, which becomes one of the country's economic powerhouses following more than two decades of reform and opening to the outside world.
Supervision over the state fiscal budget has become a top concern of the NPC, and the local people's congresses in particular, said Huang Ping, who heads the Budget Supervision Department of the Finance and Economy Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress.
"Only when the people's congress prioritizes the work of supervision, especially that over the budget, in its day-day work, can it exercise supervision over the government more effectively," he said.
For the people's congresses at all levels, legislation and supervision always constitute two tasks of equal importance. However, it seems that NPC deputies interested themselves more in supervising the government budget.
In a February meeting of Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, a number of deputies aired views on the budget of the provincial government, and its finance department had to hold numerous hearings and meetings to answer questions of deputies.
The people's congresses of Zhejiang, Anhui, Sichuan, Heilongjiang and some other provinces also took substantial measures to further increase supervision over the government budget.
"The work of local people's congresses will have a direct impact on the NPC's supervision over the State Council, or the central government, promoting the reform on the state budget examination system right from the grass-roots level up," said Ren Jiantao, dean of political and public affairs administration school of elite Zhongshan University, based in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong.
According to NPC deputy Guo Shuyan, local governments at all levels earn a big revenue from land leasing each year and, as it is extra-budgetary revenue, these governments can spend the money in line with their own decisions.
Guo did not disclose how much the extra-budgetary revenue of local governments could have. Insiders, however, estimated the total amount could amount to some 700 billion yuan (US$85 billion) a year.
The central government can have an annual extra-budgetary revenue of more than 100 billion yuan (US$ 12 billion) in the past two years, said Liu Bin, a member of the NPC Standing Committee.
To reinforce its supervision over the government budget, the NPC Standing Committee has decided to revise the country's budget law. Fu Zhihuan, chairman of the NPC Finance and Economy Committee, promised that within the tenure of the current NPC, which is to end in 2008, the legislature would exert its utmost to formulate a budget examination and supervision system to better fit China's socialist market economy system.
"This is what the NPC deputies advocate," Fu said.
(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2005)
