Study Of Reform Of Departmental Budgets

Government budget is the annual allocation plan of government resources, reflecting the scope and direction of government's activity. It is the material guarantee for the government to perform its administrative functions and to promote the social development, which concerns the country's political, economic and social lives.Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out that "the words and the numbers include of priorities, which project should do, which project should not do, it is a political issue." The special status of the government budget requires that the government budget management system must be closely linked and coordinated with the country's political and economic system.After the reform and opening up, with the gradual establishment of a socialist market economy, in the late 1990s, China implemented the government budget management system reform. The core is departmental budget reform, which focused on building a budget management pattern corresponding to the socialist market economy and public finances, promoting the department budget management to be more scientific, standardized and effective. However, with the deepening reform of departmental budget, some deep-seated problems of department budget management have gradually emerged.First, the financial distribution right is not unified, the budget co-ordination function is weak; Second, the scope of budget reports is not complete, some funds drifted away from financial control; Third, the budget allocation method is not scientific, weakening the financial distribution functions; Fourth, the budget transparency is not high, affecting the social credibility; Fifth, the binding force of budget is not strong, affecting the seriousness of the budget; Sixth, the performance of financial capital is at the low level, reducing its value. These problems have constrained the sustained and healthy development of the department budget reform. It is urgently needed to solve these problems by deepening the reform and further enhance the scientific and refinement standard of the department budget.This article drew on the experience from the domestic and foreign department budget theory and the budget management system in the mature Western market economy countries, combining with our country's political system, economic system and other special historical conditions, using the basic principles of economics including game theory, the comprehensive budget management theory, the principal-agent theory as well as the financial management concepts of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, the older generation of proletarian revolutionists, which carefully analyzed the current problems of the department budgeting reform. The article established the basic department budget reform ideas and framework in the new era, that is, department budget reform should persist in providing the service for the country's central work, persist in promoting social equity and justice, persist in improving budget allocation efficiency, persist in budget transparency and the procedures of budget management. Meanwhile, it elaborated the five basic issues of the department budget reform, including the unified management of financial power issue, integrated budget management issue, state assets management issue, political reform issue and fiscal policy research issue.Combined with all aspects of departmental budget management, this article respectively analyzed the problems in six areas, that is, the responsibilities division of department budget, the basic expenditure budgeting, project expenditure budgeting, performance evaluation systems, department budget publicity, budget monitoring system. It also proposed specific recommendations for deepening the department budget reform of the six aspects from the perspective of long-term goal of deepening reform.First, further sort out the responsibilities division of departmental budget, improve the management of department budget procedure, promote the establishment of the high-level consultation mechanism, promote the fiscal budget closely linked up with the operation department's strategy, enhance the sense of ownership of the budget units, strengthen the dominant budget position of the department.Second, improve the basic staff information database and a complete revenue database of administrative institutions, establish a strict control system of personnel volume in the institutional organization and standardized wages and benefits system, reasonably divide of the specific content of the basic expenditure, establish expenditure limit control system and dynamic adjustment mechanism for fixed number of persons and rations, promote the basic expenditure incentive and restrict mechanisms, enhance the scientific budget management of basic expenditure.Third, establish project library rolling management system in accordance with the project whole cycle model, strengthen the project pre-evaluation system, improve the function of the project library, enhance its role in the project expenditure budget audit, promote the project expenditures standard system development, improve expenditure budget equity.Fourth, in accordance with the concept of building a service-oriented government, enhance the performance concept of the budget unit, improve the performance evaluation index system and the basic work processes, consolidate the basis of performance evaluation, carefully examine the performance evaluation of the pilot project, set reasonable performance goals, establish performance evaluation incentive and constraints mechanisms to improve budget performance management level.Fifth, improve the budget management system, highlight the legal effect of the budget publicity, actively promote budget open to the people's congress system, vigorously promote budget open to the public, improve and refine budget compilation, strengthen the supervision and guidance of the budget publicity, promote budget to be open and transparent.Sixth, improve budget monitoring laws, improve budget monitoring status in the department budget management, improve the information sharing mechanism, promote the level of budget monitoring information, establish pre-, during and after monitoring, build the syncretic supervision system of special monitoring and daily monitoring, improve the status of budget internal supervision, perfect accountability mechanisms of budget monitoring, strengthen the execution power of budget supervision.