State Audit’s role vital for budget planning: seminar

The State Audit of Vietnam must bolster its capacity in supervising the annual State Budget estimates, as both budgetary collection and expenditure are not yet fine-tuned to practical conditions, officials said at a seminar in Hanoi on Tuesday.
The auditing agency’s deputy head Le Hoang Quan told the seminar that budgetary estimates had not been planned in a fair manner as most State bodies and localities wanted bigger allocations from the State coffers while wanting to contribute less.

Quan was speaking at the seminar held to discuss the State Audit of Vietnam’s role in assisting the National Assembly and provincial People’s Councils to make annual budgetary estimates.

He noted that certain budget expenditures reflected the subsidy mechanism contrary to the country’s commitments to the World Trade Organization, such as financial support for State-owned enterprises and spending for non-productive activities at certain State corporations.

There also exist conflicts when all ministries and localities want bigger shares from the State budget while resources are limited, he said. For this reason, the State Budget revenue is usually planned lower than the capacity, while the budget spending is always estimated higher than available funds, Quan said.

Seconding Quang’s viewpoint, Dao Xuan Tue, head of the State Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance, said that the annual State Budget estimates were not kept close to practical conditions.

For example, revenues for the State Budget exceeded the estimates by 20.5% in 2007, some 20.6% in 2008, 16.6% in 2009, and over 21% in 2010.

Meanwhile, budgetary allocations tend to be higher than the spending estimated for each year.

Bui Dang Dung, vice chair of the National Assembly’s Finance-Budget Commission, suggested that the State Audit of Vietnam must enhance its capacity so as to better assist the National Assembly in budgetary issues.

Saigon Times Daily

Tags: Vietnam audit