More Spending in People's Livelihood in China's Proposed Budget Report

( 2012-March-6 14:33:00)

 

China's draft central and local budgets for 2012, submitted for reading at the parliamentary session on March 5, 2012, caught eyes for increasing government spending on livelihood programs.

In the central budget, double-digit growth rates are seen in main expenditure items of importance to people's life, such as education, medical care, social security and employment, housing, culture service and agriculture.

According to the report, expenditure budget to education totals 378.13 billion yuan (60.02 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 16.4 percent over the actual expenditure in 2011.

The figure for medical and health care is 203.51 billion yuan, up 16.4 percent while that for social security and employment is 575.07 billion yuan, a rise of 21.9 percent.

About 211.76 billion yuan will go to guaranteeing adequate housing, an increase of 23.1 percent.

"An analysis of the above expenditures shows that in 2012 the central government will spend a total of 1.3848 trillion yuan, an increase of 19.8 percent, in areas that directly affect people's lives," the report said.

In terms of local budgets, the expenditure items such as education, medical care, social security and housing also see notable growth, varing from 14.2 percent to 18.4 percent.

"Taking all factors into consideration, governments at all levels will concentrate financial resources to accomplish several major tasks aimed at maintaining and improving living standards in 2012," the report said.

The tasks refer to ensuring the education spending to reach 4 percent of GDP, expanding social security system, pushing medical reform, building more than 7 million units of government-subsidized housing, and improving cultural service and rural prosperity.

Steven Dunaway, a scholar with the New York-based think tank the Council on Foreign Relations, told Xinhua that improving people's livelihood is critical to China's future.

"Doing so is essential for bringing about the needed rebalancing of China's economy away from heavy dependence on investment and exports to greater reliance on consumption to drive growth," he said.

The government needs to do more in particular to improve education, health care, and pensions, he added.

The draft report on the central and local budgets for 2012 will be examined by deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national lawmakers.

Many deputies from grassroots levels placed great attention to the expenditure items related to livelihood.

Yang Qin, an NPC deputy and farmer at a small village in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, told Xinhua on the sidelines of the session, "Everyone cares about policies related to livelihood and welfare. I specially want to know about policies on nurseries, medical care program and farmer's income."

One entry in the proposed central budget report may win her support. According to the report, the central government plans to allocate 15 billion yuan as subsidies for promoting preschool education and the spending will focus on the central and western regions and poor areas of the eastern region. The figure is 48.1 percent more than that of last year.

Mahinur Niyaz, an NPC deputy and deputy head of a public hospital, said an increasing number of patients from the rural areas in Xinjiang have come to his hospital in Urumqi, the region's capital, since they enjoyed the medical care program.

"I feel that rural people now have more confidence in the state medical care program," he said.

The government is indeed making efforts to reinforce such confidence. In the report, about 105 billion yuan will be spent in raising the annual allowance under the rural cooperative medical care program and basic medical insurance for non-working urban residents to 240 yuan per person from 200 yuan in 2011, and appropriately increase the proportion of medical cost that are refundable.

Source: Xinhua