Ten percent of China's budget for lifting rural poor out of poverty are being mismanaged or embezzled, a Chinese official said Tuesday, citing a government study.
The study, which looked at how poverty relief funds were spent in 1997 through 1999, found some money was pocketed by corrupt officials and other funds were spent on inappropriate projects, said Jiang Xiaohua, deputy director of China's poverty alleviation and development office.
Jiang, speaking after a press conference, said the amount misused was "just a small proportion of the total."
China has steadily increased the amount of poverty reduction funding to 24.8 billion yuan (2.9 billion dollars) last year from 9.7 billion yuan in
The 112.7 billion yuan the government allocated from 1994 to 2000 was three times the total spent from 1986 to 1993, officials said at the news conference.
Because of increased spending and other measures the number of people living in poverty fell to 30 million at the end of last year, three percent of the rural population, from 80 million in 1992, the officials said.
However China's definition of the poverty level differs vastly from international standards.
The figures were based on an annual income of 625 yuan per year, around one fifth of the dollar-per-day definiton of poverty used by the United Nations.
By the UN definition, China has 230 million living in poverty -- 17.6 percent of the total population of 1.3 billion people -- according to a report by the Asian Development Bank last year.
The ADB said the government figures were flawed.
"PRC's official estimate of poverty has two weaknesses: it is based on a very low income of 635 yuan (77 dollars) per capita, just about enough to meet basic food and clothing requirements, and it does not cover urban areas," said the bank's report.
Gao Hongbin, director of the poverty alleviation office, said Tuesday poverty relief funds have been used by rural officials to build factories and rural enterprises that later flopped, unable to compete in the market because of disadvantages in technology and management know-how.
He said mismanagement was a more serious problem than embezzlement and that in future the government would improve the management of the funds.
Gao said many of the 30 million impoverished in China live in harsh rural areas and the only way to lift them out of poverty might be to re-locate them to areas with better farming conditions.
The goverment is considering this measure but the cost would be high, as much as 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan per person, he said. |
