Research On Rural Highway Maintenance Funds From The Perspective Of Public Finance

The rural highway is not an ordinary transportation network,but a "last kilometer" that can narrow the development gap between urban and rural areas and meet the needs of farmers,it is also an important strategic component of the comprehensive,coordinated and healthy development of the whole economy and society.In recent years,governments at all levels look directly at the difficulties and pain points of rural road development,increase efforts to inject financial funds,rural road construction has made remarkable achievements.However,the current situation of road maintenance in rural areas is still not optimistic."three roads rely on construction and seven roads rely on maintenance." The quality of maintenance reduces the road traffic efficiency,and also seriously affects the travel of farmers and their satisfaction with the government’s work,it has become the "bottleneck" of the development of agriculture,countryside and farmers.At present,most of the rural roads in China are pure public goods,and their non-profit nature makes it difficult to solve the capital problem by means of marketization,while the "Morten Olsen Dilemma" is easy to appear when the roads are maintained through village collective investment,therefore,the government has assumed the main responsibility of rural road maintenance.As far as the current system of highway maintenance authority is concerned,the county government is the main body of the rural highway maintenance funds payment and actual implementation.On the one hand,with the implementation of "fees to taxes",the main source of road maintenance fees for rural roads has been changed from local government funds to fuel consumption taxes at the disposal of the central government,the vast majority of the rural highway maintenance funds of local governments come from the transfer payment of fuel taxes and fees by the central government,and the cost of rural highway maintenance is very high,the limited financial funds are difficult to support the maintenance of rural roads,thus resulting in problems such as the mismatch of financial rights and responsibilities,financial rights and financial resources,etc.,in order to attract more resources,local officials in China have to pull the economy quickly to get political promotion,which is the financial separation but vertical political separation between local and central governments,fiscal funds are often spent on public goods with quick short-term benefits,so poor economic performance of rural public infrastructure,especially rural road maintenance,is often neglected.Taking the rural highway in Q city as an example,this paper studies and analyzes its maintenance funds,and finds that the total amount of supply and demand is unbalanced,and the structure of maintenance funds is unbalanced,most of them come from the financial funds and are transferred by the Higher Government;the conservation funds are used inefficiently,and the funds that are really used productively are not enough to meet the real needs of the public;Conservation funds are suspected of being misappropriated and crowded out.In view of the above-mentioned problems,this paper combines the theory of public goods and the theory of decentralization to analyze it.It is considered that the non-profit and the lack of operating experience of rural roads make it difficult for social capital to flow in,and the financial capital is its only source,in order to meet the needs of the public,the public finance must bear the main responsibility,which leads to the imbalance of its structure The mismatch of financial power and responsibility power,financial power and financial power leads to the imbalance of maintenance funds,most of which come from the transfer payment of higher government,and the absence of public financial investment leads to the neglect of rural highway maintenance Misplacement leads to inefficient use of funds,which can not meet the real needs of the public,and the current backward management system of rural roads further reduces the efficiency of funds use,which makes the funds in the process of layer upon layer allocation at risk of misappropriation and crowding out.Finally,in view of the causes of the problems,from the perspective of public finance,this paper puts forward some measures to solve the problem of Rural Highway Maintenance Fund: Innovating the financing mechanism of rural highway,carrying out the reform of fuel oil tax,moving up the responsibility subject of rural highway maintenance,tilting the public finance to the maintenance of rural highway,further improving the efficiency of public finance investment,and strengthening the management of Rural Highway Maintenance Fund.