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Lawmaker pushes provincial govt to disclose budget
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-05 15:45
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GUANGZHOU: A lawmaker of southern China's Guangdong province has been pressing the provincial authorities to disclose government budget, months after Guangzhou, the provincial capital, opened its budget for public scrutiny.
"Government budget is public finance. It should not be seen as confidential," Guangdong lawmaker Xin Pu told Xinhua Thursday.
Xin, general economist of Guangdong Power Corp, asked the Guangdong Provincial Finance Bureau to disclose budget of all provincial-level departments at the annual session of the Guangdong provincial People's Congress, which ended on Feb 1.
During the session, more than 700 Guangdong lawmakers, including Xin, reviewed and voted on the provincial budget plan submitted by the Provincial Finance Bureau.
"The budget plan covers 116 departments and is as high as 469.5 billion yuan ($69 billion). It's such a large amount of money. The public should know how and where the money will be used," Xin said.
As of Thursday, Xin hasn't received an official reply from the Provincial Finance Bureau.
Liu Kun, director of the bureau, told Xinhua that opening provincial budget to the public did not have legal ground.
"Provincial budget is open to lawmakers according to the law. But there is no law saying that government budget must be open to the public," said Liu.
Liu said China was revising the Budget Law. "Guangdong will disclose the budget if disclosure to the public is written into the law."
The government of Guangzhou released budgets of all its 114 departments on the official website of the finance bureau in October last year in response to the query of finance observer Li Detao, the first time for a Chinese city to break the secret.
The website came to an intermittent halt the second day as citizens flooded to download documents. People had blamed Guangzhou government for excessive investment in nine kindergartens established for children of government officers.
Guo Weiqing, professor of politics and public affairs with Zhongshan University based in Guangzhou, said tax payers were entitled to obtain information of how the government distributed the public money.
"A transparent system will help improve government efficiency and is conducive to a stable social environment," said Guo.
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Shanghai, one of the cities that refused to open budget in the feedback to Li's proposal last year, has pledged to seek ways to promote "transparent finance."
Beijing removed "confidential" from the cover of the 200-page budget draft offered to lawmakers last week during the annual legislative session. Legislators were also allowed to take the document home rather than turning them back before leaving the venue.
Xin's proposal has received support from other lawmakers.
"Public supervision would help improve financial efficiency and justice. There is no reason that the budget cannot be made public," said Xu Zhihui, another Guangdong legislator.
Xin said he was still looking forward to a formal reply from the Guangdong Finance Bureau. "I'll keep pushing for the disclosure of the budget. I believe the day will come sooner or later."
