City bureaus release fuzzy budget reports

City bureaus release fuzzy budget reports

• Source: Global Times
• [08:55 March 17 2011]
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By Fang Yunyu

Although facing criticism for their lack of detail and vague line items, the capital's governmental departments and bureaus have released their annual budget reports for the first time as of Wednesday.

Excluding the Public Security Bureau, which has not released their budget for "security reasons," the city's 58 offices have made their 2011 budget reports available to the public.

Twenty-two departments have earmarked over 40 million yuan ($6.09 million) for "official vehicles," while 24 government offices will allocate a total of 58 million yuan to "meetings" and "study tours," according to their budget reports.

Despite the recent increase of transparency in government spending, detailed and itemized budgets still remain unavailable to the public.

For instance, the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration has set aside 6.34 million yuan for "street light maintenance" vehicles, but failed to include relevant information such as exactly how many and what kind of vehicles are to be purchased.

"We can't tell the public everything in detail!" Wang Qingwen, spokesman of the city administration commission, told the Global Times.

"I know our budget is not clear. You can criticize us. But please don't be too harsh!" he added.

The lack of detail is in part a result of unclear regulations. The Budget Law, which took effect in 1995, stipulates that all municipal departments "must" release their annual budgets reports to the Municipal People's Congress.

In contrast, the State Council issued a Decree of Government Information Disclosure in 2007, which recommends that all levels of government "should" release their annual budget reports to the public.

"Neither the law nor the decree mentions what details the budget reports should include," L Yanbin, a researcher with the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.