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Monday, 15 March 2010
Officials see thorny path to law on declaring assets
Conditions are not ripe to require officials to publicly declare their assets, a top legislating official said yesterday on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
Officials see thorny path to law on declaring assets
Ng Tze-wei 11 March 2010
Conditions are not ripe to require officials to publicly declare their assets, a top legislating official said yesterday on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
The public has been calling for a law that mandates a declaration of assets, saying it would be the best antidote to rampant corruption. But Li Fei, deputy chairman of the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, told reporters yesterday that “conditions must be ripe before a law can be introduced”.
“We are still researching whether [the declaration of assets] will be elevated to the level of a law,” Li said, pointing out that in 1995 a government regulation and last year a Communist Party regulation were introduced to deal with the issue. “There will be a process where we need to gather experience.”
To ensure that the declaration system was truly legally binding on the mainland, other systems must first be in place, he said. “[We also need collaboration] from the taxation and credit systems, such as in the case of the personal credit system. It must help us discover problems, [such as] when a person does not declare.”
Since January 1, several pilot schemes have been introduced around the country requesting cadres to declare their salaries and other “sources of income”. But NPC deputy Han Deyun, who has called for a law on asset declaration by officials for the past five years, said such a law must be co-ordinated at the central government level.
“Declaring assets should be the duty of all civil servants,” Han said. “But the system could start with part of, and not all of, the civil service in order to make the system easier to operate in the beginning.”
Another part of the transparency issue deals with budgets of various governments.
“Last year, Guangzhou publicised some of the government departments’ budgets, and attracted a wave of praise,” Gao Qiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee’s Budgetary Affairs Commission, said. “But I don’t see anything great about this ... The government should have done this long ago.”
Although the Open Information Regulations came into effect in 2008, regional governments have been reluctant to publicise budgets, most still claiming they are “a state secret”.
“Even if Guangzhou did publicise its departmental budgets, I think the public still has a lot of questions but can’t get the answers,” Gao said.
For example, such details such as how much has been spent on purchasing a car, subsidising business trips, and on receiving visiting officials are still not included.
“The next step for us is to further specify the items to be made public in the budgets,” he said.
Gao said that in this year’s budget report, to be passed on Sunday, a new clause had been added to make sure all government budgets were made accessible to the public within 15 days of their approval.
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Officials see thorny path to law on declaring assets
Ng Tze-wei
11 March 2010
Conditions are not ripe to require officials to publicly declare their assets, a top legislating official said yesterday on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
The public has been calling for a law that mandates a declaration of assets, saying it would be the best antidote to rampant corruption. But Li Fei, deputy chairman of the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, told reporters yesterday that “conditions must be ripe before a law can be introduced”.
“We are still researching whether [the declaration of assets] will be elevated to the level of a law,” Li said, pointing out that in 1995 a government regulation and last year a Communist Party regulation were introduced to deal with the issue. “There will be a process where we need to gather experience.”
To ensure that the declaration system was truly legally binding on the mainland, other systems must first be in place, he said. “[We also need collaboration] from the taxation and credit systems, such as in the case of the personal credit system. It must help us discover problems, [such as] when a person does not declare.”
Since January 1, several pilot schemes have been introduced around the country requesting cadres to declare their salaries and other “sources of income”. But NPC deputy Han Deyun, who has called for a law on asset declaration by officials for the past five years, said such a law must be co-ordinated at the central government level.
“Declaring assets should be the duty of all civil servants,” Han said. “But the system could start with part of, and not all of, the civil service in order to make the system easier to operate in the beginning.”
Another part of the transparency issue deals with budgets of various governments.
“Last year, Guangzhou publicised some of the government departments’ budgets, and attracted a wave of praise,” Gao Qiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee’s Budgetary Affairs Commission, said. “But I don’t see anything great about this ... The government should have done this long ago.”
Although the Open Information Regulations came into effect in 2008, regional governments have been reluctant to publicise budgets, most still claiming they are “a state secret”.
“Even if Guangzhou did publicise its departmental budgets, I think the public still has a lot of questions but can’t get the answers,” Gao said.
For example, such details such as how much has been spent on purchasing a car, subsidising business trips, and on receiving visiting officials are still not included.
“The next step for us is to further specify the items to be made public in the budgets,” he said.
Gao said that in this year’s budget report, to be passed on Sunday, a new clause had been added to make sure all government budgets were made accessible to the public within 15 days of their approval.
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