Future national audits will focus more on "performance auditing"
rather than scrutinizing the law and trying to expose rule
violations, a top official said.
In an online interview yesterday on the website gov.cn, Li Jinhua, auditor-general of the National
Audit Office (NAO), the country's public finance monitor, said that
besides focusing on how and where the often huge government budget
is spent, the job of the NAO should gradually be shifted towards
how "well" the money is spent.
Li, who is widely hailed by the media as "iron face" for the
pragmatic but down-to-earth NAO reports that usually expose the
problems of the other parallel departments of the State Council,
said he would give himself a mark of 70 for his job
performance.?
"Judging from the current legal system and the status quo of our
country, I just passed the line, but did not reach excellence," he
said.
Li said that much still needed to be done for China's audit work
to catch up with developed countries.
"Like large-scale projects, which usually cost multi-billions,
such as the Three Gorges project, the South-to-North water
diversion project, what is their benefit after the money was poured
in? That is what audit work should focus on in the future," he
said.
In response to a question over who should be held responsible
for the huge financial discrepancies found in each of the NAO audit
reports, Li said that he hoped the audit office would help
establish an effective and scientific accountability system in the
future.
An incomplete accountability system makes it hard to pin the
blame on a specific entity.
"And some problems were actually caused by backward mechanisms,"
he said.
"In that case, even when we punish the responsible person, the
problem won't be solved unless the mechanism is reformed."
Though some of the same problems are detected to repeatedly
occur in many government institutions, Li remained upbeat.
"A lot of social problems are not fixed in one go," he said.
"It often needs years of constant inspection, redressing efforts
or even non-stop punishments before these problems can be
cracked."
Li also said that the current audit system is, on the whole, in
accordance to the national status quo, and remained
independent.
The constitution stipulates that the NAO, under the direct
leadership of the premier, is exempt from the intervention of other
departments while carrying out its audit work.
"One important feature of the system is high efficiency," Li
said.
The results of an audit can be submitted directly to the
premier, thus the problems are quickly redressed through the
administrative power of the State Council, he said.
(China Daily July 25, 2007)
