Research On Fiscal Sustainability Evaluation Based On Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report

As national economy development changes from high speed to high quality,the downward trend of fiscal revenue growth appears gradually,considering the strong rigid expenditure,the contradiction between fiscal revenue and expenditure becomes increasingly prominent,and the deficit risk becomes more severe.By obeying certain rules and institutional constraints,the government’s revenue and expenditure behavior can achieve a reasonable and balanced development trend,which is regarded as fiscal sustainability.Fiscal sustainability also includes the ability to maintain fiscal revenue stability and national economic growth,the ability to repay maturing debt and the ability to achieve intergenerational equity.Financial sustainability in China is an outstanding manifestation of public and development sustainability,which emphasizes the provision of public goods and services sustainably at a reasonable level.The "13th Five-Year Plan" proposed to "improve the mechanism of sustainable financial development",the National Financial Work Conference repeatedly mentioned"fiscal sustainability".Whether finance can achieve long-term,stable and sustainable healthy development has become a topic of common concern among government managers,the public society,financial institutions,international organizations and other stakeholders.The evaluation of fiscal sustainability based on Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report is a comprehensive evaluation of government financial management,financial operation and long-term sustainability by using scientific and systematic analysis methods and means.The comprehensive evaluation index is generated according to the report data,which can realize cross-regional and time-axis comparison.The warning mechanism is set according to the threshold interval of the index,which can predict and prompt the risk for the user of the report.In this paper,Delphi expert survey method,entropy method,efficacy coefficient method and other questionnaire research and statistical methods were used to set up the financial sustainability evaluation index system based on the Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report,and the short-term(within 5 years)comprehensive evaluation of the financial sustainability of the nationwide and 31 local governments.On the basis of the traditional time series model,machine learning methods such as Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Regression are flexibly used to forecast the basic data required by the indicators,so as to apply the evaluation system to the medium and long term(5-30 years)fiscal sustainability assessment.The combination of various research methods can better solve the problem of nonlinear time series prediction of economic data,and the evaluation index formed is scientific and reasonable,in line with the objective reality,which is an innovative exploration of research methods in this field.It is found that among many factors affecting fiscal sustainability,revenue conservatism,fiscal deficit risk and debt burden are the most important:The National Comprehensive Evaluation Index of fiscal sustainability from 2015 to 2020 shows that with the economic downturn and the large-scale implementation of cutting taxes and fees,the contradiction between fiscal revenue decline and rigid expenditure growth is bound to increase the exposure risk of revenue and expenditure.Although our fiscal revenue is good according to the long-term forecast data,the future fiscal deficit risk is always great;The scale of government debt financing expands,the debt burden increases,and the proportion of refunding bonds keeps increasing,which can smooth the debt service pressure to a certain extent,but there is the possibility of delaying the debt repayment risk to future generations.Short-and medium-and long-term forecasts show that the probability of debt risk in the next 30 years remains high;The long-term potential service ability of the government shows a fluctuating upward trend,which indicates that the government has made some achievements in improving service efficiency and reducing operating costs,and maintained a certain proportion of investment expenditure on fixed assets,laying a long-term foundation for the government to provide good services continuously.The decline in living standards and rise in unemployment caused by the pandemic have a greater impact on the level of services,and the forecast data show that the severe warning will gradually be improved by 2025,until all the warnings will be lifted by 2040.There is no big risk of fiscal sustainability of local governments,but the development is not horizontal balanced among regions,and the western region is still relatively weak.All regions have borne the impact of the pandemic and other external events,such as the international environment.The resilience of the western region is weaker than that of the eastern and central regions when facing the external pressure.The fiscal sustainability of some regions has a large fluctuation range and unstable performance,while the fiscal sustainability of some regions is fragile for a long time.This paper puts forward policy suggestions from two aspects of Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report and the fiscal sustainability of public finance.In terms of Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report,firstly,IPSASB recommendations can be used to comprehensively evaluate fiscal sustainability from the dimensions of revenue,debt and services,and fully consider the impact of driving and risk factors.Secondly,it is necessary to improve the evaluation index system of fiscal sustainability of the Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report,realize the quantitative analysis of fiscal sustainability,and show the level of fiscal sustainability directly.Third,we should improve the accuracy,depth and breadth of the Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report data,to ensure that the data is true and complete,cover the necessary scope of consolidation,and further enrich the information contained in the report,and form data synergy with the national macro and micro statistical data;Fourth,explore the advantages of multiple evaluation and prediction methods,such as integrated measurement statistics and machine learning,to ensure the objectivity of evaluation and accuracy of prediction.Fifth,innovate ways of presentation and disclosure of financial sustainability information to better realize fiduciary responsibility and provide decision-making reference for stakeholders;Sixth,give full play to the application value of fiscal sustainability evaluation results and early warning mechanism,better guide,play and consolidate the positive role of driving factors,prevent and defuse systemic major risks in advance,and provide reference for local government officials’ performance evaluation,economic responsibility evaluation and government audit;Seventh,strengthen the Governmentwide Comprehensive Financial Report application and analysis of the system support and software and hardware construction.In the aspect of promoting sustainable fiscal development,we should consolidate the material foundation,stabilize and strengthen the ability of fiscal revenue absorption;In terms of debt,we should reasonably control and arrange the scale of deficit,and prevent and defuse various government debt risks.In terms of services,we will adjust and optimize the structure of government expenditure and improve the capacity and quality of public services.This paper closely keeps up with the theme of the times and the direction of reform,focuses on the improvement of the efficiency of national governance,with unique topic selection perspective,innovative research methods.The evaluation framework and index system constructed by the research are original,thus the warning mechanism has a good feasibility,with theoretical value and practical significance.