2016年CRI Audit Report: Some Public Funds Overspent, Misused（在线收听）

The problems were revealed by Liu Jiayi, head of the National Audit Office, when he briefed lawmakers about the central government's budget spending for last year.

Liu told the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress the audit covered close to 190 billion yuan of budget spending at more than 40 central government agencies and their affiliated bodies.

He criticized some of the audited bodies for violating regulations on frugality, doing little to rein in spending on overseas travel, vehicles, and entertainment.

"70 bodies under 10 centrally-administered state-owned enterprises, including Sinopec and China Southern Airlines violated the rules to overspend more than 1 billion yuan on office building construction, travel, vehicle purchases and golf activities."

According to the report, another problem was the inefficient use of poverty relief funding.

The country's top auditor said 870 million yuan of such public funds had been idle for more than one year or wasted by the end of March this year.

This accounted for 17 percent of the 5 billion yuan used to cover about 3,000 projects in 40 counties across 17 provinces.

Auditors even found some money had been left unused for as long as 15 years.

The report also shows around 27 million yuan had been wasted due to 29 abandoned or unsatisfactory poverty relief projects.

In addition, 151 million yuan had been fraudulently obtained through fabricated contracts, or used for other purposes.

Liu also reported problems in terms of distribution of housing subsidies and malpractice in public debt financing.

At the same time, he proposed measures to prevent similar problems from taking place again.

"Local governments should enhance supervision over these problems and accounts when assessing the performance of the audited bodies. Those who fail to fix problems should be held accountable."

He also urged improvements to prevention and accountability systems, and to the release of information and reports.

The country's audit report is submitted to its top legislature every June.

For CRI, this is Niu Honglin.