China to revise budget law


(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-10 22:30
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BEIJING - China's top legislature will review a draft revision to the Budget Law in August, which aims to improve the budgetary work and make government budgets more transparent to the public, a legislator said on Wednesday.

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Revising the Budget Law is an important part of the legislative work of the 11th national People's Congress (NPC), said Gao Qiang, vice chairman of the NPC Financial and Economic Affairs Committee and director of the NPC Standing Committee's Budgetary Affairs Commission, on the sidelines of the annual parliament session.

Gao said the revision will ensure that "budgets are more complete" and will clearly state that "all the government's revenue and expenditures should be included in budget."

It was common in the past few years that local governments recorded much more revenue than as budgeted, and the surplus was not supervised by people's congresses, said Gao.

The Budget Law took effect in March 1994 and the revision work has lasted two years.

Gao said the revision also states punishments for those breaching the budget law.

Gao said "all budgets submitted to the legislature must be made public on government websites.