Can't be too detailed
Even agencies that have already published figures have yet to meet the people's expectations.
The Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) was the first to reveal its accounting figures on April 14, in which it had budgeted 40.19 million yuan ($6.2 million) for the "three public consumptions" this year, but no details of the estimates were released.
About one month later, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) showed on its website that it planned to spend 349,800 yuan ($61,000), 5.45 million yuan ($843,000), and 12.4 million yuan ($1.9 million) on receptions, overseas travels and government cars respectively in 2011, yet no total expenditures were ever mentioned.
Compared to the MST and the MEP, the National Audit Office (NAO) set a better example by publishing its budgets of both 2010 and 2011 in more detail.
From its financial statements and 1,000-word explanation, the NAO's 2010 per capita expenses on overseas travel and government cars were about 16,800 yuan ($2,599) and 54,100 yuan ($8,370), respectively.
Improvements vs. problems
Though only half of the 98 ministries have unveiled their expenses on the "three public consumptions," detailed or not, the practice has still won plaudits from the public as an improvement in building a transparent government.
China issued a regulation on government transparency in 2008 requesting governments at various levels to disclose their budget statements.
Since then, information about the state's central budget, along with the expenditures of the central government departments, has been made public.
In March, Premier Wen Jiabao urged the country's government agencies to reduce administrative expenses by cutting spending on overseas business trips, reforming the system for government service cars, and cutting the number of meetings and documents.
Wen also addressed the problem in this year's Government Work Report, saying that "we will more quickly release government budgets to the people to keep them informed about how much the government spends and what it spends money on."
China's crackdown on various forms of extravagant spending by officials saved the country 5.7 billion yuan ($882 million) last year, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.
Despite improvements, problems remain, warned the executive meeting of the state council on May 4."The budgets are still not detailed enough and will not meet people's expectations."
Experts also pointed out that "the released figures only show how much the government has spent, but do not tell where the money has gone specifically."
