How hospitable should a government official be when receiving a business guest? Hospitality is not where the hazard lies, but the corruption and waste of public funds behind it have become a real concern.

The money spent by public institutions to receive business guests was estimated at 370 billion yuan (US$47 billion) nationwide in 2004, more than twice the annual output of the underdeveloped Gansu Province.

The State Council issued a document in the middle of October stipulating how governments at various levels should control their spending when hosting business guests. It convened a conference a month later urging local governments to tighten control of this expenditure by creating budgets for this spending.

The Wuhan municipal government in Central China's Hubei Province formulated rules of its own to curb spending in this area a year ago.

These rules ban officials from entertaining business guests from the same city or from the same institutions using public funds. Alcohol is strictly banned from the dinner table except when a foreign or special guest is being entertained.

As a result, the city government's expenditure in this area dropped by 38 per cent on average from January to May this year, and the decrease was as high as 50 per cent for some departments.

The municipal government stipulated in October that any dinner or banquet entertaining business guests must be made public in the relevant department or institution.

In this way, all within a department or institution get to know who has been received with a banquet and how much money was spent.

Such transparency has put the leaders of various departments or institutions under the supervision of their staff. This will make leaders think twice before they squander public funds hosting guests with banquets or engage in dirty dealings such as bribery of their superiors using public funds.

Rules may be slackened, but transparency will bring all spending into the daylight.

The Wuhan municipal government will make specific budgetary plans on hosting guests for all its departments from next year.

This is exactly what the central government requires local governments to do since a tight budget system is believed to be an effective way to stop overspending at the very source.

A budget system is indeed important, but it must be supported by transparency and effective supervision, and the latter must be applied in the process of making the budget.

A budget for this type of expenditure can be made high enough for corrupt officials to splash public funds around at will if it is made in the dark.

(China Daily 12/13/2006 page4)

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