Full text: Report on China's central, local budgets (4)

II. Draft Central and Local Budgets for 2014

2014 is the first year for us to thoroughly put into practice the guiding principles of the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee and to comprehensively deepen reforms. This is also an important year for meeting the targets set in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. Well formulated 2014 budgets will enable public finance to play a key role, and this has important implications for carrying out all the reform plans of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, accelerating the transformation of government functions, letting the market play a decisive role in allocating resources, and promoting modernization of the country's governance system and capability.

This year, the economic development environment in China will remain complex. Fiscally, there will be a serious imbalance between government revenue and expenditure. As the country's potential economic growth slows down and we advance reform of the tax system, influencing factors such as those will likely lead to the slowdown in revenue growth. In addition, initiatives to deepen reform in an all-around way, adjust and optimize the economic structure, and promote development of social programs will require even more investment. Given the fiscal and economic situation, in doing the public finance work and preparing the budgets for 2014, we need to fully implement the decisions and plans of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, make progress while ensuring stability, carry out reforms and innovations, and continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy. We need to deepen reform of the fiscal and tax systems and advance reform in relevant sectors so that reform of the fiscal and tax systems will underpin the country's overall reform efforts, accelerate the change of the growth model, and raise the quality and returns of economic growth. We need to optimize the structure of government expenditures, make good use of both existing and additional monetary and financial resources in order to help improve the basic public services system, promote development of social programs, and emphatically improve the people's well-being. We need to tighten up financial discipline and strictly limit spending on official overseas visits, official vehicles, and official hospitality, as well as other regular expenditures. We also need to make budgetary work more open and transparent, strengthen local government debt management, and promote sustained, sound economic growth and social harmony and stability.