China's State Council, or the Cabinet, has ordered government agencies to take immediate actions to rectify the financial abuses exposed by the National Audit Office (NAO) in late August.
All units that misused funds were required to report their rectification results to the State Council before Oct. 31, according to an executive meeting of the Cabinet Thursday, which was presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.
The NAO found 29.38 billion yuan (4.32 billion U.S. dollars) worth of "problematic" expenditures after auditing the 2007 state budget spending of 53 ministerial-level departments and 368 of their affiliates.
It also found 258 million yuan of disaster relief funds were embezzled and used for administrative expenses or government construction projects.
The meeting decided that more central agencies shall make public their budgets. Eleven of them did this last year.
The Cabinet also reviewed a draft ordinance complementary for the enforcement of the Labor Contract Law, and decided that further revision has to be done before it could be enacted.
The Labor Contract Law took effect on Jan. 1 and has raised concern in China's corporate world because of its enhanced protection of laborers' rights.
(Xinhua News Agency September 5, 2008)