Audit report says funds misused
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-30 06:42 Road authorities last
year misappropriated 1.64 billion yuan (US$205 million) in funds that was
supposed to compensate farmers for land requisition.
Auditor General Li Jinhua revealed the misuse of funds in his annual state
audit report to the legislature in Beijing. The report detailed spending on 34
highway projects last year.
The expressways run a total length of 5,324 kilometers and 166.2 billion yuan
was invested in the infrastructure.
The 1.64 billion yuan represented one third of accounts payable. Li's report
said local governments or land requisition departments misused the money. The
funds were spent on things ranging from bonuses for officials and other
construction projects.
Li cited a highway project near Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province. It required
687 hectares of land with a standard compensation fee of 2.335 million yuan per
hectare. However, farmers received only 72,000 yuan per hectare.
Li said, supervision and construction departments on 26 projects had
appropriated 2.16 billion yuan for entertaining, conferences, bonuses, external
investments or other construction.
Auditors also spot checked 20 highways in use for more than a year and
discovered that 14 failed to meet the average transport capacity cited in
feasibility reports before construction.
Li attributed the failure to "local governments that purposely overvalued
projects in order to get them approved."
"Some departments in charge have multiple roles such as decision-maker,
supervisor and builder," the auditor general said. "This leads to illegal
operations, corruption and conflicts of interest."
Li said despite problems such as construction management, land requisition
and investment effectiveness, the general situation had improved considerably in
the last five years.
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