Government and Policy

Spending on social services increased in 2009

By Guan Xiaomeng (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-06-23 21:01

China's total fiscal expenditures in 2009 amounted to 4,382 billion yuan ($643 billion), including an increase of 31.7 percent on social services such as education and medical care, which amounted to 742.26 billion yuan.

Finance Minister Xie Xuren delivered a report Wednesday on last year's central government budget to the 15th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature. Xie said the national defense expenditures outran the amount budgeted by a tiny margin of 2.2 percentage points, standing at 482.50 billion yuan.

Following the national defense cost, the next top three expenditures were those on science and technology (143.38 billion yuan), public security (84.58 billion yuan) and education (56.76 billion yuan).

Social welfare and employment costs ran well over projected spending by 51.2 percentage points to a total of 45.44 billion yuan. Less was spent than expected on low-income housing, which cost only 84.2 percent of the amount budgeted. Xie said local governments at different levels instead picked up some of the bill for housing projects.

Xie added that extravagance and corruption still affect efficiency of spending, and that a mechanism is needed to assess the central budget use rate of governments at various levels.

Liu Jiayi, auditor-general of China's National Audit Office (NAO), said more than 790 people had been investigated last year for embezzlement and 94.12 billion yuan (about $13.82 billion) had been recovered or returned from those cases.