More auditing reports will be made public in the coming five years
to enhance supervision, the National Audit Office (NAO) has
revealed.
By
2007, the office will strive to open all auditing reports and
investigation reports to the public except for those concerning
State secrets, business secrets and other contents unsuitable for
publishing, according to the office's five-year working plan which
was released on Friday.
It
marks a big step forward in making the nation's government more
transparent. Previously, almost all auditing reports have been kept
secret and NAO only reported to the State Council and the National
People's Congress (NPC).
However, NAO has been calling for reform for the past few years and
in some cases, abstracts of auditing reports have been
published.
The latest bold move was on June 25 when Auditor-in-Chief Li Jinhua
reported to the NPC Standing Committee the auditing results of the
2002 State budget.
NAO's website published the full text of the report, which sharply
criticized the activities of the Ministry of Finance, State banks,
large State enterprises and some other ministries. Later, the
information was released by the official Xinhua News Agency and
published by numerous media outlets.
It
was the first time that the full text of an auditing report was
released, arousing huge interest from the public.
The office has promised to standardize contents, procedures and
forms of the reports to be published in the coming five years.
NAO also vowed to tighten its auditing methods on the use of fiscal
funds, State financial institutions and large State firms.
Under the plan, national auditors will pay more attention to
checking the efficient use of State assets to discover losses of
State assets due to poor management and flawed judgment.
In
the past, most energy was devoted to checking the authenticity and
legitimization of income and expenditure of State finance, banks
and enterprises.
(China Daily July 5, 2003)