As an important measure taken during the special period, China has increased its fiscal deficit and issued special government bonds to combat coVID-19 by 2 trillion yuan this year. The funds will go directly to cities and counties through a special transfer payment mechanism, and will be used mainly to ensure people's employment, basic livelihood and market entities. Data show that by the end of October, of the 1.7 trillion yuan of funds under direct management, all funds that are qualified had been allocated, and cities and counties accounted for 96.1 percent of the funds disbursed, demonstrating the policy requirement of "sticking to the bottom with one stick".

Can good experiences and practices be sustained and improved? People are looking forward to it. An executive meeting of the State Council recently called for the establishment of a long-term mechanism for direct access to people's livelihood funds to ensure accurate direct access to beneficiaries. The news is encouraging.

Thanks to a special transfer payment mechanism, the finance department has been able to deliver the party's policy of benefiting the people to the people as soon as possible, thus effectively improving people's well-being. Macro policies should focus on overall planning and coordination, form synergy, and improve the timeliness of funds for people's livelihood, so as to create more favorable conditions for the smooth implementation of other policies. For example, this year, direct funds to ensure employment and subsidize small and micro businesses will not only help secure jobs for millions of households, but also help enterprises to solve difficulties and stabilize industrial and supply chains.

Money to people's livelihood, but a word "quasi" - the financial sector to enable direct funds "eyes" of the monitoring system, the direct capital budget decomposition orders, payment and other links to achieve full coverage, the whole chain monitoring, parameter with direct funds clear records the cause and effect of every sum of money, the money is where we got to the cities and counties to the basic unit, be clear at a glance, help prevent PaoMaoDiLou. Within a short period of time, the financial system set up a platform and set up a system to ensure the direct access of funds to the warehouse, the allocation and the use of funds, thus achieving the "dual monitoring" of budget implementation progress and project performance objectives, making useful explorations for strengthening budget preparation and performance constraints, and accumulating practical experience for dealing with various complex challenges in the future.

On the whole, people's livelihood funds directly improved the safety and efficiency of financial funds, and also conducted a "big training" to improve the ability of fiscal governance. According to the executive meeting of the State Council, the next step is to gradually raise the level of ensuring and improving people's livelihood, and give priority to ensuring people's livelihood expenditures in the budget. It is foreseeable that in the future, the direct financial system will play an increasingly important role in the allocation and use of people's livelihood funds and even more budget funds, which puts forward higher requirements for improving the relevant institutional support and technical support capacity, and ensuring the smooth passage of the "highway" and the "clarence eye".

To this end, we should continue to strengthen the performance management constraint of financial budget funds. Every straight up funds should not only be allocated in time and on time, but also be used dynamically. We should strengthen the application of performance evaluation results, take performance self-evaluation, departmental evaluation, third-party evaluation and financial evaluation results as the important basis for next year's budget arrangement, strictly arrange funds for projects with low budget implementation rate and poor performance evaluation results, and put into practice the principle that "spending should be efficient and ineffective, and spending should be held accountable".

We will continue to use new technological means to strengthen oversight of government revenues and expenditures. This year, the financial direct funds monitoring system has shown great strength in "fast and accurate". In the future, we will further rely on big data analysis and other technical means to ask the effectiveness and accountability of budgetary funds. On the premise of ensuring data security, we should make good use of mobile Internet technology, improve the early warning time, and stop illegal expenditures in time. We will promote the disclosure of performance evaluation information to make the "financial accounting books" more open to social supervision, promote standardization through disclosure, and improve the efficiency of the use of financial funds through disclosure.

We still need to make fiscal policies more effective and sustainable, and we look forward to the early establishment and greater role of the long-term direct financing mechanism for people's wellbeing.

Source: Ministry of Finance, PRC