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From July to October last year, auditors had saved close to 40 billion yuan ($6.6 billion) in public funds which could have otherwise been wasted or embezzled, the National Audit Office reported on Friday.
A statement made by the office on its website said that by the end of October, government departments, publicly funded organizations as well as state-owned enterprises with fiscal operations not in accordance with regulations had already corrected existing misconduct involving approximately 358 billion yuan.
It was in June last year when the National Audit Office submitted its annual audit report of the fiscal performance of government departments in 2012 to lawmakers. After a review of the report, lawmakers ordered government agencies and other organizations mentioned in the report to correct their misconduct. They likewise asked the National Audit Office to make a report on the results of corrections to be made by the concerned agencies and organizations.
Since then, the auditors had retrieved 38.9 billion yuan after uncovering the irregular expropriation or use of nearly 35,000 hectares of land. Aside from these discoveries, auditors had turned over 175 pieces of evidence related to criminal activity, which resulted in 1,204 individuals being convicted or subjected to disciplinary action.
Wu Hui, an associate professor of governance at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, commented that publishing the results of self-corrections in fund management done by government departments and state controlled institutions is an indication that the country's leadership is serious about instituting reforms by having a tighter control of government expenditures.
Wu added that the public now shows great concern about what erring government agencies and state-owned enterprises will do after the exposure of their misconduct. According to Wu, the public is now more sensitive to government spending and revenue after President Xi Jinping launched his forceful regulation of extravagance and corruption in government last year, which urged government departments to be stricter in their supervision of government funds.
