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To disclose budget is a duty
( China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:09
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The size of a government is no excuse for not making its financial budget public, which is compulsory legal obligation for the authorities, says an article in Beijing Times. Excerpts:
Netizens across the country have nicknamed the Baimiao township government in Bazhong city of Sichuan province the "naked township government" for posting its entire financial budget online.
The Baimiao example is expected to prompt higher-level governments of honoring their promise of making their budgets public. Though some people say systematic difficulties and complex procedures make it difficult for other governments to follow the Baimiao example, the size of a government cannot justify its failure to disclose its budget. In fact, higher-level governments usually have more people with specialization in specific areas and stronger dataprocessing capacity and effective communication channels, which should make the process easier and simpler. Many large countries, irrespective of whether they are developed or developing, have set good examples of how to make budgets public. Some of these countries are as big if not bigger than many Chinese provinces in terms of area, population and complexity of economic structures. But they still declare their budgets every year. Provincial and lower-level governments should realize that they will not do the people any favor by disclosing their budgets. Instead, they are duty-bound to the public to do so. Actually, they should also make public their extra-budgetary finance allocations because they have the potential to breed corruption.
(China Daily 03/19/2010 page9)
