Chapter 50 Chapter 48 Create a "Sunshine Account Book" for Official Consumption

Thrift is the unshirkable responsibility of the government, and curbing corruption in official consumption and trying to reduce administrative costs are exactly what it means to build a thrifty government. "Our unit went to a five-star hotel to hold a training meeting last week." On September 26, 2008, Xiao Zhang, a friend who works in a certain agency in Beijing, told the reporter, "The leader felt that everyone worked very hard, so he arranged a standard room for each person. ,Feels great." According to Xiao Zhang, the training lasted for two days, and more than 100 people participated in the training. Based on the calculation of a standard room of 400 yuan per person per day, the accommodation fee alone amounted to more than 80,000 yuan, plus conference meals, conference venues and entertainment. Facility rental, etc., the sum of various expenses is not a decimal.

People in the circle seem to be used to such official consumption.Ordinarily, official consumption, as a necessary administrative cost, is a reasonable expenditure.However, the reporter's investigation found that in many places, official consumption can easily be alienated into corrupt power consumption. "my country's current official consumption system has not adapted to the laws of the market economy, and the reform needs to be accelerated." Professor Li Chengyan, a doctoral supervisor at the School of Government Administration of Peking University, said in an interview with reporters, "On the basis of insisting on institutional reform, we should vigorously promote my country's The reform of the public finance system, the establishment of an institutional framework for hard constraints on government behavior and budgets to curb corruption in official consumption. Efforts to reduce administrative costs are exactly what building a thrifty government should be about.”

It is understood that in recent years, from the central government to the local government, many rules and regulations have been issued to control official consumption, but the effect is not obvious. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, from 1995 to 2006, the administrative management fee in the national fiscal expenditure increased from 99.654 billion yuan to 757.105 billion yuan, an increase of 6.60 times in 12 years; 4.71%, which was 14.60% in 1995 and rose to 18.73% in 2006. From an international perspective, compared with the ratio of 18.73% of the administrative expenses in the 2006 budget to the total fiscal expenditure, it is far higher than 5.06% in South Korea, 6.5% in France, 2.38% in Japan, and 2.38% in the United Kingdom. 4.19%, 7.1% in Canada and 9.9% in the United States.

In fact, the number of administrative management expenses in our country is still far higher than the above-mentioned ratio-the expenditures of some agencies still have financial support policies, and the phenomenon that units find ways to raise money by themselves, and even many units' infrastructure expenses, office supplies, etc. Expenses such as the purchase of transportation vehicles and welfare subsidies are all self-raised and come from extra-budgetary income. The reporter's investigation found that, behind the "growth rate" of administrative expenses, some local agencies were extravagant in terms of private use of public vehicles, eating and drinking with public funds, public travel, construction of luxurious office buildings, too many meetings, excessive energy and resource consumption, and performance projects. Waste has become a major chronic problem of government behavior.

In order to stop the corruption of official consumption, the central government has issued dozens of relevant regulations in the past two decades, such as the implementation of a centralized treasury payment system, the inclusion of official reception expenses in the budget, and the regularization of meetings and staff trips of all central state agencies and institutions. Implement "fixed-point reception" management, and so on. So why is corruption in official consumption still on the rise? In the interviews, the interviewees generally believed that the fundamental reason was that the reform of official consumption did not touch the essential problem, that is, those officials held a large amount of discretionary money.As long as officials hold a lot of financial power and the scope of their expenditure is difficult to control, it is difficult to ensure that it is used rationally.

"The problem of official consumption highlights the major flaws in my country's public financial system. The lack of openness and transparency of fiscal expenditures, imperfect supervision mechanisms, and imperfect accountability systems have led to more and more waste." National School of Administration In an interview with reporters, Professor Gong Weibin said frankly, “First, budgetary constraints are softening and there are a lot of extra-budgetary funds. Second, the current financial reimbursement system and auditing system are not perfect, and even if there are problems in the audit, there are no strong punishment measures. Third, the transparency of the operation of administrative power is not high, and public supervision has no way to start. Fourth, the evaluation of cadres rarely considers administrative costs, which makes government officials lose the internal motivation and external pressure to reduce administrative costs."

"Our country's current financial system, from the arrangement of funds, the preparation, review and supervision of departmental budgets, to the use and management of funds, there are loopholes." Li Chengyan analyzed that, "Once the existing financial budget is approved, the budget will There is almost no supervision and restriction in the implementation process. Coupled with low transparency in the operation of administrative power, vacant positions of property rights and responsibility subjects, neglect or even neglect of the assessment of administrative costs, and the absence of a bargaining mechanism between the public and the government, it is difficult to curb corruption in official consumption become inevitable."

"The biggest problem with fiscal and administrative expenses is opacity." Professor Zhang Ming from the Department of Political Science at Renmin University of China said in an interview with reporters, "All the government spends are taxpayers' money, but according to the current system, taxpayers have no Quan Guan asked where the money was spent. Or the government just lists the expenditure table, which outsiders can’t understand and have no way to ask.” At the beginning of 2008, the central government launched the business card system to speed up the reform of business consumption, and its content is eye-catching.

On July 12, 2007, the Ministry of Finance and the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Interim Measures for the Management of Business Cards of Central Budget Units".According to the interim measures, at the beginning of 2008, the central budget department and provincial budget units comprehensively carried out the pilot reform of business cards. Business cards refer to credit cards exclusively used by civil servants and can be used for daily business expenses and financial reimbursement.According to experts, the business card implements the operation method of "bank credit line, personal card payment, unit reimbursement and repayment, and financial real-time monitoring". With the payment and settlement of official cards, the financial staff of the unit can directly inquire about every transaction of official consumption.When the repayment is due, the financial department of the unit will pay the money directly to the issuing bank.

"Traditional micro-payments for official business are made in cash, which is not conducive to management and supervision, and even the phenomenon of collecting bills for reimbursement in the financial reimbursement process." Li Chengyan believes, "The implementation of the reform of official business cards means spending public money to do business, such as When traveling on business trips to buy airline tickets, stay in hotels, buy office supplies, reception, etc., as long as you can use bank cards, you must use business cards for settlement. The traditional cash reimbursement system will gradually withdraw from the stage of history.”

Since April 1, 2008, the first batch of reform pilots for business cards in Beijing has been launched in 11 units including the Haidian District Labor Bureau, Public Security Bureau, and Audit Bureau.It is understood that the official card consumption system will be promoted in the city's municipal administrative units in 2008. "The implementation of the business card system can improve the transparency of payment and realize the dynamic monitoring of financial funds." A young civil servant from the Haidian District Labor Bureau in Beijing believes that "it can effectively eliminate the use of fake invoices for reimbursement or false reimbursement invoices and other official consumption. Corruption has also played a positive role in improving the transparency of fiscal expenditures." "Corruption in official consumption cannot be completely prevented by relying solely on official cards." Professor Ren Jianming, Director of the Research Center for Integrity and Governance, Tsinghua University School of Public Administration, believes, "If the existing budget system cannot be touched, civil servants or leading cadres have too much discretion over public funds. problems cannot be resolved.” "The implementation of the official card system can restrain some official consumption in the initial stage, but over time, the effect will not be great." Zhang Ming pointed out, "Because the root cause of official consumption corruption lies in the lack of restrictions on government power. Any level As long as the government wants to expand expenditure, it can obtain it from the areas under its jurisdiction through its own power. Therefore, for some departments with real power, business cards are useless." Gong Weibin believes: "Official cards are mainly used to monitor budgetary expenditures, and extra-budgetary funds are difficult to control. Extra-budgetary funds are by no means a small number, and the soil of corruption has not been fundamentally eradicated. Therefore, the official card system is only a way to curb corruption in official consumption. An effective means, but it is not the last resort." It is understood that before September 2008, more than 160 central budget departments had all implemented the business card reform.At present, some places in China have also launched this reform one after another, including Beijing, Tianjin, Sichuan, Shandong, Chongqing, Hubei, Zhejiang and Jiangsu and other provinces and cities. Many interviewed experts believe that to effectively curb official consumption corruption, it is not enough to rely on the official card system as a policy or measure.The reform of the official consumption system should be speeded up again, and a package of measures should be adopted, and a multi-pronged approach should be taken. "The problem of disorderly growth in public expenditure cannot be solved by some technical means." Zhang Ming believes that "an institutional framework for hard constraints on government behavior and budget should be established so that people can control and supervise government expenditure through budgetary constraints." It is understood that in terms of the official consumption system, some foreign experiences are worth learning from.In some developed countries, at the beginning of each year, all government departments that spend financial funds will submit a budget application to the government financial management department. After the government financial management department summarizes it, it will be reported to the executive head, and finally submitted to the legislative department for approval.After the financial budget is approved by the legislative department, it must be strictly implemented. Violation of the budget is illegal.The budget is very detailed and clear. For example, office expenses should be specific to how much to buy copy paper and how much to buy ink cartridges, rather than a general office expense.Only then can the legislature deliberate.If the budget is not enough to add, it needs to be reviewed by the legislature. "The principle of 'zero tolerance' should be adopted for official consumption corruption. Only in this way can the occurrence of corruption be fundamentally eliminated and reduced. This is an important experience in anti-corruption in many countries in the world." Li Chengyan suggested, "Under this premise, we should improve the administrative system as soon as possible. The performance appraisal system should clarify the main body responsible for waste. Accelerate the formulation of office conditions and standards for relevant levels, and seriously investigate and deal with illegal construction that exceeds the standard. Another point is to cancel a large number of extra-budgetary income, enhance the integrity of the budget, and improve the effectiveness of supervision. sex." "We should vigorously promote the reform of my country's public finance system." Professor Qi Shanhong, a doctoral supervisor at Nankai University, said in an interview with reporters, "First of all, the government should insist on streamlining institutions and personnel. The key to controlling the scale of administrative agencies lies in the scientific division and determination of administrative departments. The boundaries of government functions should focus on solving problems such as overlapping agencies and overlapping functions, especially the multi-headed management of social affairs. Secondly, promote the construction of a system that restricts government fiscal expenditures, including office buildings and office facilities for government departments at all levels. Use, conference expenses, etc., should be at least relatively uniform for each province, region, and city. Third, establish a scientific decision-making mechanism and severely punish decision-making mistakes, which can also save financial expenses, because the current huge waste caused by decision-making mistakes It is also a very serious problem. Fourth, introduce a performance management mechanism, publish expenditures to the public, and use diligence and frugality as a standard for performance evaluation of cadres. That is to control the performance of local governments through financial budgets.” "We should boldly reform the untimely regulations and regulations in official consumption, and remove obstacles from the inside for the construction of a government ruled by law and a clean government." Du Liyuan, a lawyer from Beijing Zhongsheng Law Firm, proposed that on the one hand, the budget law should be revised as soon as possible and a complete set of regulations should be established. Budget reporting system, budget monitoring system and budget hearing system.It has been 13 years since my country's current budget law came into force in 1995. The regulations on budget preparation, approval, adjustment, and supervision are too simplistic and lack relevant regulations on budget hearings, which cannot meet the requirements of public finance.On the other hand, the people's congress system should be improved, and the review and supervision of the budget should be strengthened. Du Liyuan also suggested: "Speed ​​up the implementation of the newly promulgated "Government Information Disclosure Regulations", provide citizens with unimpeded channels for inquiries, suggestions and supervision, and strive for citizens' understanding and support for the government."