China : Managing Public Expenditures for Better Results
Despite its high economic growth, Chinas public expenditure management faces profound challenges: 1) The retrenchment of the Plan puts more of the burden for the macro and microeconomic policy on the budget. 2) Extra-budgetary funds and quasi-fisca...
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Format: | Report |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Washington, DC
2015
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/10/728867/china-managing-public-expenditures-better-results-country-economic-memorandum http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22901 |
Summary: | Despite its high economic growth, Chinas
public expenditure management faces profound challenges: 1)
The retrenchment of the Plan puts more of the burden for the
macro and microeconomic policy on the budget. 2)
Extra-budgetary funds and quasi-fiscal operations of the
banking system undermine fiscal discipline, which
contributed to the repeated bouts of inflation. 3) Shifting
spending to the Governments priorities is slow, and is in
part undone during budget implementation. Over time, this
could threaten sustainable growth and equitable growth. 4)
While overall social indicators are high, regional
disparities remain large. Government services seem
overstaffed, which could escalate costs if wages continue to
rise. To address these challenges, China needs to reform its
public expenditure management. Chinas first priority is
restoring fiscal discipline - to delineate a clear budget
constraint for every line ministry and unit, and break down
the sectoral budgets into organizational budgets. To forge a
stronger link between the State Councils policy priorities
and the budget, China needs to revamp its budget process.
The State should focus on articulating the governments
strategic priorities, but leave detailed planning for
achieving these priorities to line ministries. Decentralized
administration can be a major asset for cost-effective
service delivery, if accountability for performance is improved. |
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