July 4, 2013
Translated by Dou Yiping

The Ministry of Finance revealed details of how much government bodies operating under the authority of the State Council spent on cars, official travel and receptions in 2012 in a report published  last week.

During the second meeting of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress last week, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei (楼继伟) delivered a report on the actual spending of various central government agencies during 2012.

The report noted that government agencies operating under the authority of the State Council spent a total of 7.43 billion yuan on overseas travel, cars and official receptions - often referred to as the "three publics" (三公 sān gōng) - last year.

Of that figure, 1.95 billion yuan was spent on overseas travel, just over 4 billion on the purchase and maintanence of official cars and over 1.4 billion on official receptions.

Spending on the "three publics" in 2012 was 559 million yuan less than had originally been budgeted for at the start of the year.

In 2010 central government agencies spent 9.47 billion yuan on such items.

According to this year\'s budget, central government departments plan to spend close to 8 billion yuan on the "three publics" in 2013. They plan to spend 2.14 billion on overseas travel, 4.4 billion on cars and 1.4 billion on official receptions.

In a first, the National Audit Office (NAO) also inspected the spending of 45 of these central government agencies on meetings and overseas travel.

Liu Jiayi (刘家义), the head of the NAO, revealed details of irregularities uncovered by the auditors to the NPC, noting how regulation of such spending was lax and a certain amount of waste was involved.

This marks the fourth year that central government departments have released details of their budget to the public after new regulations introduced to encourage budget transparency came into effect in 2010. The push to have the spending figures made public is part of broader effort to counter corruption by slowly increasing oversight and supervision of powerful government departments and gradually opening up the opaque workings of party organs and government ministries.

Links and Sources
NPC: 关于2012年中央决算的报告
Ministry of Finance: Central Government Agencies Spending Data 2010
Economic Observer Online: Central Government Departments Reveal Budgets for 2013
Economic Observer Online: Reluctant Transparency