The Study On Financial Relief Relations Between Central Government And Local Government

Our country have been suffered from natural disasters for about thousand of years, According to statistics published by our relative government department, the loss cost by natural disaster is at least 200billions each year. It is until southern snow disaster in 2008, WenChuan earthquake and YuShu earthquake that researchers began to pay attentions to financial relief, especially focusing on financial relief funds.The research subjects of this article is Financial relief relations between central government and local government, several foreign countries have been studied on natural disaster management for quite a while. According to Foreign literature on the Financial relief relations between central government and local government, on one hand,federal government is becoming more and more positive in managing disasters, on the other hand, what bothered the federal government is that overreactions by itself would get local government negative and cost more loss.So researchers aboard currently have paid more attention on specific questions more like constraints on local governments. When I went through existing domestic Literature, I found there was lack of researches on financial emergency funds, which of that most existing researches discussed financial emergency funds theoretically, not to mention the Financial relief relations between central government and local government.The National social science funds subject the author involved-the research of improvement on emergency system funds guaranteed, have been done Preliminary research on financial relief relations between central government and local government, the original results mainly are:financial funds is one of the most important relief funds resources, of which central government playing a principal role. Financial relief funds mostly invest on emergency relief and disaster recovery, paying no enough attention on the prevention. Financial funds are seemly like the only funds to disaster relief, the bank funds and the donated funds haven’t played important roles in it. It attributes to inadequate of reserves, governance division and property rights division have no match, with lack of financial contributions and Inspiration mechanisms. The mainly thought to resolve problems above is, to configure governance division and property rights division between central government and local government reasonably, to design reasonable financial contributions and inspiration mechanisms, to extract reserves, to strengthen the effect other social funds and to improve the relief management system.When disaster occurs, in order to eliminate disaster cost, the clearance of financial relief responsibilities between central government and local government is especially important. Therefore the article mainly research into two aspects:how to configure governance division and property rights division between central government and local government reasonably, and how to design reasonable financial contributions and inspiration mechanisms.Natural disaster relief’s attribute is cross governance, it is described on system layer, that the expenditure responsibilities should be taken by local government mostly. Also relative rule pointed out, it is until the local government couldn’t afford the disaster relief that it could refer to the central government for relief subsidy.Although rules exist, the reality is, the local government has no impulse to take its own relief responsibility, throwing it to the central government. The central government did well, actually too well. Lately WenChuan earthquake and YuShu earthquake proved that. In 2010, the central government put around 80% of relief fund wanted to YuShu earthquake relief, the local government only takes not to 20%. The central finance is becoming the biggest "shareholder".There are three obvious problems in regular financial funds for relief. Regular relief funds are not extremely enough and the local government’s relief expenditure rely on the central transfer; Relief reserves is not enough; The management of financial relief fund suffer much confusion:improper relief expenditure, random fund use.According to the phenomenon described above, Intergovernmental financial responsibilities are extremely misplaced. The central government is negative without any method to resolve it. Intergovernmental governance division and property rights division are not cleared is the fundamental reason. And, natural disaster’s occurrence has worsened the Intergovernmental relations.With advanced experience of developed countries like American, Japan, what these countries in common are:clearance of Intergovernmental relief responsibility; preparation of disaster reserves annually considering financial situations; the central government offer fund to the local government following detailed, effective financial contributions and inspiration mechanisms.The article gives some suggestions in three phases:mitigation and preparation, response, arid recovery. The principal of all the suggestions is to make the central government and the local government be clear of independent responsibilities in governance division and property rights division. In mitigation and preparation phase, the central government should take more obligations, as well as in recovery. But, in response phase, the local government should make quick and effective relief actions, playing a leading role.Speaking of the local government’s property rights, first all of, the local government should prepare disaster reserves according to the specific ratio Measured by the central government. Secondly, the central government will offer fund aid to the local government for free or not, depending what performances the local government will show. At last, in recovery phase, the central government will appropriate approve d fund to the local government,and the local government will get extra punishment or credit, depending on the accuracy of the relief fund it asked to the central government.