The Study Of Jinan's Department Budget Reform

Since the Reform and Opening-up, the fiscal administration system in our country has experienced a series of significant reforms. In early 1980s, China adopted the Revenue-Sharing System (i.e. the system of dividing revenue and expenditure between central and local governments and holding each responsible for balancing their budgets). In 1984, the fiscal administration system was transformed into the Tax-Sharing System. During these reforms, the fiscal relations between central and local governments had been preliminarily defined, and the relations of distribution among the state, enterprises and individuals had been further standardized. However, these reforms mainly focused on the administration of fiscal revenue; the reforms on fiscal expenditure administration were not carried out at the same time.For a long time, both central and local governmental budgets had been allocated according to the purpose of the funds, rather than between different departments. The funds, including administration funds, scientific research funds and infrastructure funds, were distributed and administrated respectively by different units inside the fiscal department. This system has not only weakened the distributional functions of the fiscal department, but was also hardly conducive to the full use of the budget, or to the effective supervision on the budget by the legislative or the auditing offices. Reforming the traditional fiscal expenditure administration system is imperative.Since late 1990s, our country has launched fiscal expenditure administration system reforms featuring department-specific budgets, which are able to clearly and comprehensively reflect the fiscal revenues and expenditures of government departments of all levels, thus adapt to the improving governmental functions under China's socialist market economy. After more than ten years of continuous reform, the department-specific budgets have attracted nationwide attention.Taking Jinan as the research object, applying basic theories of Public Finance, this thesis analyzes the theoretical foundation of the reform of department-specific budgets. It also introduces the advanced practices and experience of local governments in three developed countries:Japan, the U.S., and Germany, exploring what Jinan can learn from them. It describes the brief process and results of the reform within Jinan's local government, focusing on present problems and obstacles. As results, it puts forward the following concrete proposals and ideas:to straighten out the relationship between fiscal and other functional departments; to further improve the comprehensive budget level; to formulate rational budgeting time; to implement science-based budgeting method; to establish a sound system of work and personnel quotas; to restructure the fiscal department; to improve the supervision of the budgets by the NPC and the audit; to further open the fiscal data to the public, etc. The thesis comprehensively summarizes the practical and detailed applications of department-specific budget on the municipal level. Therefore, it can provide theoretical guidance for the recent implementation of GFMIS in Jinan; it can also serve as an example for regions and municipalities nationwide alike.