China's state audit watchdog discovered redundant infrastructure projects being built with funding from the country's four-trillion-yuan stimulus package.
The redundancies were a result of poor planning and coordination at the local level, said Liu Jiayi, general auditor of China's National Audit Office, at a news conference held on Thursday.
"For instance, a village wanted to build various community centers to cater for cultural activities, family planning stations, policy publicity centers, and so on.
"But in reality, one multi-purpose community hall could satisfy all the above needs. The redundancy is a result of poor planning, management and organization of various agencies at the local level," Liu told the press conference held in Beijing.
He added the Office had already informed respective local governments and local communist party committees of such defficiencies, and said follow-up action would be forthcoming.
Liu, however, stressed that there was no serious abuse or huge wastage of the stimulus package funding detected during the auditing process.
He said other minor problems identified included a time-lag in funding delivery for planned projects in under-developed areas.
The Chinese government introduced the four-trillion-yuan stimulus package in November last year to spur its slowing economy after the global financial crisis broke.
The stimulus package - to be spread over a period of three years - mainly focused on infrastructure projects, such as the construction of road and railway, rural development, and rehabilitation of earthquake-hit areas.
How to ensure the efficient use of the funding had become a major concern for the public and the central government alike.
As of late January,at least some 230 billion yuan has been dispersed by the central government.Under the four-trillion yuan stimulus package,only 1.18 trillion would be forked out by the central government, while the remainder be raised by local governments.
At the news conference, Liu also disclosed that the Office investigated 20 cases of major violations and financial discrepancies that drained out some six billion yuan of funding.
Half of the cases involved the three largest banks in China, namely the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank. The irregularities mainly related to lending practices in the banks' branches level that could jeopardize risk control.
"For instance, due to having close relationships with certain borrowers, some lending clerks did not carefully examine and screen their loan applications. The applications were then sent to their superiors for fast track approval," said Liu.
He added findings from the investigations had been submitted to relevant supervision agencies, including police and prosecutor office, for the next course of action, some violators had also been prosecuted.
