The?Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MLSS) said it
would publish information about the country's huge social security
fund in April every year, a move aimed to make management of the
two-trillion-yuan fund more transparent.
The ministry offered a brief introduction to the social security
system along with information about the fund by the end of 2006 in
a document posted on its website on Thursday.
The document shows that 187.66 million Chinese, or 76 percent of
urbanites in employment, have been covered by pension insurance by
the end of 2006. It's the first time the ministry has revealed the
coverage of the pension insurance system.
It also said 631 billion yuan was added to pension accounts in
2006, while 489.7 billion yuan was expended, leaving the
accumulative balance of pension accounts at a total of 548.9
billion yuan by the end of 2006.
Similar information about medical insurance, unemployment
insurance, work-place injury insurance and fertility insurance is
also included in the document.
Previously, there was no such information about individual
insurance categories.
However, information about how the fund was invested and
investment yields were not included in the document.
"The disclosure of information about the social security fund,
especially its financial information, is to facilitate supervision
from the public and make the fund more transparent," said Xu
Yanjun, deputy director of the ministry's social security
management department.
The annual disclosure of information would be made available to
the public via press conferences, on websites of government
authorities or on television, radio and newspapers.
"The information disclosed should include cases of violations of
laws and regulations. Once identified and dealt with, these cases
must be revealed to the public quickly," Xu said.
The ministry said Thursday that more than 98 percent of the
problems discovered by auditing authority have been corrected,
without citing any particular cases.
Yet, more information could be expected in future disclosures,
as the process of key cases related to the social security fund is
required to be included in the disclosure, according to the
ministry.
"The attempt is after all an important step forward, and such
information disclosure would be improved and more details will be
provided in the future," Xu said.
Information for 2007 is expected to be published next
April.
(Xinhua News Agency November 30, 2007)