1、A recent report indicates that most of Chinas city governments lack fiscal transparency.According to a research of the Tsinghua University, among the 81 surveyed municipal governments, less than half of them meet the nations average transparency standard in terms of government expenditure.Experts su
2、ggest that governments from all levels should make a more detailed and reasonable budget plan.Wei Tong has more.Tsinghua University started a research in 2011 on the financial transparency of more than 80 cities.Eight indices were used to test the transparency level of the governments expenditure in
3、 2010.They include government function, financial report of 2011 budget, final accounts of government spending as well as expenditure outside the yearly budget.The report shows the information such as government function, leaders resume and even the yearly budget can be easily found on most governme
4、nts official websites. But the execution of the budget is far less released.It is also noteworthy that none of the 81 surveyed governments has publicized its extra expenditure beyond the budget.Zhou Shaojie, a senior researcher from the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University sug
5、gests that a less thoughtful plan has led to the mismanagement of a citys fiscal budget, which local governments are reluctant to release to the public.In the United States, it normally takes 18 months to deliberate a budget plan. But it takes only less than 6 months in China. So we can see the proc
6、ess lacks thorough consultation and investigation. The plan is not made completely based on the demand of the grassroots majority. Meanwhile, we also need to invite the public to participate in the plan-making so that the ordinary peoples voice can be heard.The report indicates that the transparency
7、 depends on the citys GDP per capita, reliance on foreign trade and the leaders capacity.Zhou Shaojie says it is common that cities with export-oriented economy and high GDP growth tend to have better budget management. He suggests expenditure should be spent in a balanced way between prompting GDP
8、growth and improving peoples livelihood.Governments in underdeveloped areas are reluctant to tell the public how the budget is spent because we can say GDP growth is now the only yardstick to evaluate a local governments leading capacity. We need to change the evaluation system by considering how we
9、ll the government can manage the budget so as to improve peoples welfare.Zhou says he hopes the report can serve as advice for the urban governments to win more public trust and promote social equality since the public has the rights to know the source of government revenue, how the expenses have been spent and how to manage them.For CRI, I am Wei Tong.
