Suggestions On The Deepening Reform Of Treasury Concentrated Payment System In China

As the developing of socialist market economy and the deepening of economic system reform in China, setting up a modern state treasury management system has become an inevitable choice. Treasury concentrated payment system, which is widely adopted by many countries in the world as a finance management system, can effectively enhance the transparency of the financial funds appropriation and the transparency in its using process, so that the government can control the overall financial funds flow and its flow direction.Our country should implement treasury concentrated payment system , and the significance is that it can satisfy the necessity of setting the public finance framework and promote the reform of scientific financial administration, also it can help to meet the principle that our county should carry out the treasury management system and strengthen the supervision and control, so as to guard against corruption from the source.In China, the reform of treasury concentrated payment system is advanced step by step under the leadership of the State Council, and has undergone the process of pilot reform, regulations integrity, experience summarization and comprehensive inplement. General Office of the State Council issued the document [2001] 18 in March, 2001, deployed the reform of treasury concentrated payment system on the whole. Ministry of Finance and People's Bank of China formulated a series of policies to ensure the reform could be carried out favorably. The pilot program gained great achievement and the pilot range was expanded. By the end of 2004,140 departments had been brought into the reform of treasury concentrated payment system among 160 plus central budget departments. And then the reform came into the comprehensive stage, which realized what the State Council raised that fully implementing the aim of reform during the period of "10th Five-Year Plan", then the reform was pushed deeply since 2006, the reform in central government units have covered the third class budget units, and the majority of provinces has pushed forward the reform to city level and is extending the reform to county level actively.In China, the reform of treasury concentrated payment system includes the following three major aspects: firstly, setting treasury single account system. In China, treasury single account system is constituted by treasury single account, foreign fund budget finance account, finance zero-balance account, budget units zero-balance account, and special account. The opening, nature and liquidation of present account differ from the original account in essence.Secondly, the reform demands standardizing the payment modes and financial funds procedures. The type of financial fund payment type includes wage payment, purchase payment, sporadic fiscal payment and transfer payment. Sporadic fiscal payment adopts finance authorization type, and the other three are directly paid by fiscal way. When identifying the two payment methods, the payment procedures have been standardized at the same time, which can improve the transparency of the payment process. Thirdly, setting up perfect state treasury information feedback mechanisms.The real-time monitoring to the treasury payment information can provide decision-making basis and foudamental information for budget planning, budget execution analysis, and macroeconomic regulation.Through several years of reform, uniform and standard fiscal fund payment management system has been set up in China, and the foudamental status of treasury concentrated payment system in finance management system has been established. By the end of 2007, 160 plus departments had been brought into the reform of treasury concentrated payment system, 36 provinces, autonomous regions , municipality and specifically designated cities had carried out the reform of treasury concentrated payment system. At the same time, more than 300 cities and1300 countries has began to advance the reform of treasury concentrated payment system. During the process, the advantages of the reform was brought into play, and some problems is coming out simultaneously, such as: relevant laws and regulations are not sound, which is not conducive to the deepening of reform , irregularity funds affect the budget unit's business, units of zero-balance accounts cause financial accounting complicated, and imbalance relationship between treasury of People's Bank of China and the agent bank causes difficult issues, such as regulatory problem. In this paper, I think the main reason for all the problems above lies in the following aspects: treasury concentrated payment system is a systematic project whose complementary measures are behind time; Department budget reforms are not to the end and the budget management system is not standardized; The stability of treasury concentrated payment system is lower and bank funds liquidation system is imperfect.Some suggestions are put forward in this paper aiming at the problems above and its reasons in the reform process, which can be listed as following.1. Improving related laws and regulations, perfecting treasury concentrated payment systemIn order to realize this goal, the related government agencies should establish law which is suitable for the reform course, coordinate the relations between feasibility, moderately advanced, strict legislation and its praciticality.And related government agencies should complement laws and regulations from the following three aspects: basic legal norms, the main administrative rules and regulations, relevant specific norms.2,Establishing sound budget management system, complementing budget system, and promoting budget constraint force.Establishing sound budget management system, the related government agencies should abolish extrabudgetary funds, put all the government financial resources into finance which should be given an overall consideration and supervision. Further more, government agencies should complement budget system, fully implement department budget. Also, related offices should further refine the budget items, so that to allow for adequate time for budget making and improve the accuracy of budget making. Budget constraint force and enforcement should be strengthened. The allocation concepts of strict budget and the loose supplement funding should be changed, and the phenomenon of reducing the additional funding in the budget process should be avoided.3. Exploring zero-balance accounts model, standardizing the use of balance fundsThe related offices should improve the function of zero-balance accounts, settle bank collection problems, simplify accounting procedures; norms balances the use of funds to co-ordinate the arrangements for the balance of funds, the phasing out of the balance of accounts; consider the creation of funds between the zero-balance accounts and operating funds account to ensure that normal work units carried out.4. Promoting financial informationization construction, complementing a sound treasury management informationization systemThe related government agencies should integrate the internal subsystems of treasury management informationization rapidly and contribute to the construction of a unified system operating platform; and should set up the state treasury centralized payment hardware net connection quickly, speed up the horizontal connection between the finance, tax, treasury, commercial banks, and the budget units, then abolish the zero-balance account ultimately and realize direct implementation of financial funds liquidation in treasury of People's Bank of China.5. Preventing the risk of treasury concentrated payment system, constructing a risk prevention system.After the implement of treasury concentrated payment system, the financial funds payment risk transformed to the present centralized type from the decentralization type in the past. The risk that the treasury payment department undertakes is increasing. To ensure the safety of financial funds, the related offices should construct risk prevention system of treasury concentrated payment system according to the following five aspects: setting up sound financial system, strengthening external monitoring, nailing down the supervision responsibility of national audit department and People's Bank, designing effective incentive and restraint mechanisms; enhancing technology security of treasury payment system, building dynamic state treasury monitoring system; strengthening the supervision of the National People's Congress.