The central government has drawn up a budget of nearly 7.97 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) for receptions, overseas tours and vehicle use in 2013, 126 million yuan less than the amount spent in 2012, following the government's vow to fight extravagance.
According to a document posted on the website of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) Thursday, the government plans to spend nearly 2.14 billion yuan on overseas trips, around 4.4 billion yuan on government vehicles, and some 1.43 billion yuan on official receptions.
The ministry also revealed that the central government spent nearly 8.1 billion yuan on the so-called "three public expenditures" in 2012, 111 million yuan above the budget it drew up last year.
The budget division of the MOF said the extra spending came mainly from the setting up of postal monitoring institutions by the State Post Bureau.
The 8.1 billion yuan spent in 2012 was much lower than the "three public expenditures" of the previous two years, which were 9.34 billion in 2011 and 9.47 billion in 2010.
Gou Yannan, a professor of public finances at Fudan University, told the Global Times Thursday that the year 2012 altered the growths in the "three public expenditures," and attributed the reduction to the central authority's call to improve its working style last December.
On December 4, 2012, the central leadership pledged eight measures to fight extravagance and bureaucracy, including an end to lavish receptions, less spending on officials' trips and fewer accompanying members in overseas visits.
Previously, government agencies would go on spending sprees toward the end of the year to exhaust budget surplus.
The MOF vowed to keep improving its management of the "three public expenditures," make the budget plans of central government departments more specific, and strictly control the scale of such budgets.
The vow echoed a statement made by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at his press debut as government head last month.
"Based on the positive gestures made by the central authority, there is no way this year's spending will go up," Ye Qing, a deputy director of the Hubei Provincial Bureau of Statistics and a long-time advocate for reform of the use of government vehicles, told the Global Times Thursday.
Gou said the planned spending cut of 126 million yuan is a significant one, given the rising commodity prices.
In an interview with the Xinhua News Agency, Bai Jingming, a deputy director of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science under the MOF, said the negative growth in the central government's fiscal revenue during the first quarter also reminded the government that it has to "tighten its belt."
"The government should voluntarily cut the 'three public expenditures' so as to direct the limited fiscal funds to the most needed sectors," Bai said.
Departments under the central government Thursday also posted their 2012 budget execution and 2013 budgets for the "three public expenditures" online. Most of the departments saw declines in their budget, citing the central authority's call for thrift.
Departments that saw their budget rise clarified the reasons on their websites.
This is the fourth year that central government departments have made public their budgets. And this year, the release of "three public expenditures" came several months earlier than in previous years.
An MOF official told Xinhua that the early release would facilitate the public's supervision over the expenditures.
While agreeing that the decrease in "the three public expenditures" was a positive sign, Ye noted that the release of the figures is still not transparent enough and lacks details regarding spending.
"We haven't been told the number of government vehicles or groups on overseas trips, nor the expenditure of each group," Ye said. "Clearly, the spending is going down, however, we still don't know whether the current expenditures are reasonable."