Studies On The Problems Of Financial Support To Agriculture For Performance Management

During the recent years, all levels of provincial governments in Hubei, China have implemented "industry sectors fostering agriculture sectors, cities supporting rural areas" campaign to promote the new socialist countryside and changed their fiscal policies to reflect the "giving more support to, reducing more burdun from, and deregulating more in the agricultural scetors" trend. Specifically, the provincial government in Hubei actively adjusts the public investment structure to support the agriculture development. Statistical evidences show there is a steady increase in terms of the total agricultural investment from all levels of the Hubei provincial governments. However, despite these positive changes, the public investment domain of Hubei’s agriculture sectors is still faced with big challenges such as lack of funding, inefficient fund management, environmental protection issues, improving agricultural efficiency and farmers’ income and so on. Logically, studying and evaluating the complex mechnism of performance management in terms of fiscal and financial support for agriculture sectors and hence improving funding system efficiency, optimally allocating rural constraction resourses, and increasing overall agricultural competitiveness is one of the most urgent tasks faced by the Hubei provincial government.Based on the results from previous related researches, this study has thoroughly studied the performance management mechenism of fiscal and financial support for agriculture sectors and fouses on the following issues:Defining fiscal/financial support and performance management related terms and concepts; Reviewing the policy transition history of the fiscal/financial support for agriculture both in the national and provincial level; Establishing the performance management evaluation system for Hubei provincial fiscal/financial support for agriculture based on economical and administrative theories and principles; Finding the factors that limits the provincial agricultural supporting system’s effectiveness and efficiency according to the establised evaluation criteria; Drawing on foreign governments’ achievements and lessons on the related areas and providing constructive performance management advices for the local government’s agricultural supporting policy. It is our sincere hope that thie study can help Hubei province to change its agricultural supporting policy from "focusing on allocating finanical resource" to "focusing on fiscal/financial supporting system’s performance and efficiency" and effectively support the development in the "three rural domains"(agriculture, countryside, and farmers).In the paper by learning on research results from other scholars both inside and outside China, we try to achieve breakthroughs in the following areas:(1) Besides using the fiscal, finance, and economics theories and principles, we also incorporated the managerial and administrative concepts in analyzing the agriculture supporting system.(2) Evaluate of Fiscal/Financial support for agriculture in Hubei’s economic performance, social performance, administrative performance.(3) We took a flow of fund perspective in analyzing the agriculture supporting machanism and offered our suggestions in terms of reform on the fiscal/financial supporing system in the provincial level.