Global Times - First look at gov't budget crashes website

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First look at gov't budget crashes website

Source: Global Times
[04:28 October 26 2009]
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Poll: How do you think about the measure that provincial government released detailed expense budgets?

Poll Options

How do you think about the measure that provincial government released detailed expense budgets?

A try of making government affairs public, it should be praised;

Please the public with claptrap;

Budget express openly isn't equal to budget transparency;

Budget is "state secret", it shouldn't release to the public;

A political show;

I don't care;

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By Lin Meilian

Internet users overloaded the official website of a finance bureau in Guangdong Province Friday, after the bureau released detailed government expense budgets available for free download by the public.

The budget disclosures, released amid a heated debate on government financial transparency, attracted 40,000 visits and paralyzed the website, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

It is the first time that Guangzhou, the provincial capital, has made its annual spending accounts available to the public. The Guangzhou Finance Bureau posted the budgets of 114 government departments, totaling 20 billion yuan ($2.93 billion) for 2009.

"The public has been longing for access to information on government budgets and where the money goes," Ning Xiangdong, a business professor at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times Sunday. " It's a significant step in the disclosure of government information."

The budget items include revenues, expenditures and budget summaries. If printed on paper, the downloadable files totaling 2.08 gigabytes would stack up to the height of two bricks laid together.

"As long as the figures are not confidential, every citizen has a right to read them," Zhang Jieming, head of the bureau, told Xinhua Friday.

He said the bureau would upload next year's budgets as soon as the Guangzhou People's Congress approves them.

Some curious Internet users said they were disappointed to find the money spent on overseas travel junkets for government officials were not specifically detailed in the documents.

"We only know how much money they spent, but we don't know if they spent it in the right place or not," Zhang Hui, a Guangzhou resident, told the Global Times.

The finance bureau was unavailable for comment.

Despite some users' disappointment, Professor Ning said full financial disclosure would need time to improve, but it is inevitable that other provinces will follow the Guangzhou example.

"If the concept of 'public finance', which takes account of public opinion in government spending is well served in Guangzhou, it will work in other parts of the country as well," he said.