By Zhu Meili, Du Jing, Yang Mo & Chen Cheng, Research Team on “Local Fiscal Budget Reform and Training”, China Development Research Foundation

Research Report, No.194, 2019 (Total 5694)

2019-10-31

Abstract: A positive trend has been seen in China’s budget performance management reform owing to the great efforts of the central government and the proactive innovation explored by the local ones. Beijing, Zhejiang Province, Hebei Province and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province have achieved remarkable progress in establishing performance management modes, optimizing fiscal resource allocation and reforming management structure. However, there are still great difficulties and challenges for China to push ahead with its budget performance management reform. For example, the budget performance awareness is yet to be fully established, the performance information quality calls for further enhancement, the performance management is hard to be put into real practice, the performance management capacity of some government departments needs to be strengthened and the incentive mechanism which should be in line with accountability is yet to be established. To tackle the problems mentioned above, the experts and scholars at the conference proposed that special attention needs to be paid to the following aspects to establish a budget performance management system with Chinese characteristics. First, the budget performance needs to be redefined. Second, the target index system needs to be redesigned from the demand end. Third, the budget performance management system needs to be simplified. Fourth, the performance incentive mechanism needs to be refined Fifth, the responsibility of different entities needs to be made clear. Sixth, the utilization of technology needs to be promoted.

Key words: budget performance management, fiscal resource allocation, local innovation, deepening the path to reforms