Why the benefit of financial support for agriculture is not high

[the long channel of allocation, the division of the distribution mechanism, the mismatch between financial power and administrative power, the imperfect assessment and supervision mechanism of officials, and the unscientific decision-making mechanism are the main factors for the low efficiency of the use of financial funds for agriculture.]

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the central government has begun to increase investment in agriculture on the basis of all the reduction and reduction of agricultural taxes and fees. Since 2004, in the No. 1 document issued by the central government every year, there are measures to strengthen agriculture and benefit rich farmers. Whether in the field of agricultural production, direct subsidies for grain, subsidies for improved varieties, subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment, comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials, or in the construction of a new countryside, poverty alleviation in rural areas, support for rural compulsory education, the development of rural medical and health undertakings, the establishment of rural social security system and other fields, there is the shadow of state financial investment.

Throughout the past ten years, a series of policies issued by the central government to support agriculture and benefit agriculture and strong agriculture have exceeded any period since the founding of the people's Republic of China in terms of density, variety and strength. According to the data published on the website of the Ministry of Finance, the national public expenditure in 2013 is 14.02 trillion, while the fiscal expenditure on supporting agriculture in the above areas has exceeded 1.5 trillion, and the fiscal expenditure on agriculture has accounted for more than 10% of the total fiscal expenditure. However, due to the constraints and constraints of the current administrative system and operating mechanism, as well as the impact of many loopholes in the management and operation of financial funds for agriculture, a large number of financial funds for agriculture failed to play the expected benefits. The phenomenon of "running, risking, dripping and leakage" of financial funds for supporting agriculture is very prominent, and the waste is extremely serious. Every year, the audit report published by the National Audit Office involves the serious violation of discipline and use of financial funds for supporting agriculture, including project rent-seeking, misappropriation, misappropriation, interception, false claim, corruption and so on.

These problems have attracted the attention of the central leadership and the attention of all sectors of the society. in recent years, the No. 1 document issued by the central government has repeatedly stressed: "strengthen the management and use of funds for financial support for agriculture, and innovate the operating mechanism of funds related to agriculture." reform the agriculture-related transfer payment system, delegate the authority of examination and approval, effectively integrate financial agricultural investment in rural areas, and put an end to any form of misappropriation, layer-by-layer interception and false claim. Ensure that the use of funds is effective. " How to solve the problem of low efficiency in the use of financial funds for agriculture? The author believes that it is necessary to find the deep-seated reasons behind the phenomenon and find ways to solve the problem through observation, research and analysis.

The allocation channel of financial support and benefit funds for agriculture is too long and there are too many levels.

The allocation of financial funds to support agriculture and benefit agriculture has to be allocated through the multi-level administrative management system of the central government, provinces, cities, counties, townships, and even village committees. if the information is not transparent and supervision is not in place, the problem of "running, risking, dripping, and leakage" may occur at each level, and finally there will be the phenomenon of "water to the dry land". Moreover, this kind of organization and management system is a unique organizational management mode and public policy decision-making mode of "party-government double-track system". Therefore, the local party committee holds the decision-making power of regional administration, society, economy and other affairs. This special organization and management system and decision-making model have resulted in more circulation levels and channels in the actual operation of the project arrangement of financial support for agriculture and the use of funds, and when it finally reaches the hands of users or beneficiary farmers, the scale and probability of the loss of funds to support agriculture will also increase accordingly. The channels for the allocation of financial funds for agriculture are too long and too many departments are involved, which makes the supervision unable to achieve seamless coverage in the whole process and in all directions, which not only increases the capital cost and technical difficulty of supervision, but also leads to the loss of funds for the benefit of agriculture.

The allocation mechanism of financial support and benefit funds for agriculture

Corresponding to the multi-level allocation of financial funds for agriculture and long channels are the problems brought about by the current "block division" system of financial funds for supporting agriculture and benefiting agriculture. Most of the current projects and funds allocation of financial support and benefit to agriculture adopt the distribution mechanism of "cutting into pieces and allocating in accordance with the rules". In order to take care of the interests of various departments, limited central financial funds for supporting agriculture and benefiting agriculture have been allocated to more than a dozen ministries and commissions, and the decision-making power of the project is in the hands of various functional departments. Because it is at the top level of decision-making, the project arrangement can only specify the investment direction, how to plan the specific project, who is responsible for it, when and where to implement it, how much funds are needed, and what proportion each competent department should bear, which cannot be arranged as a whole under the current division of departmental functions, resulting in the use of project funds sprinkled with pepper.

In this way of management, if the use direction, implementation scope, construction content, project arrangement and other aspects of the funds for supporting agriculture can not be fully coordinated, the responsibilities can not be defined or the departmental interests can not be emphasized respectively, it is bound to lead to a wide range of projects to support agriculture, many points, a small amount of investment in a single project, and even serious problems of repeated investment and cross-management, resulting in low efficiency of projects and serious waste of funds for supporting agriculture.

In reality, this is the case. Due to the existence of fragmentation, the responsibilities of various government departments are unclear, and problems pass the buck to each other; there are many branches of government, sometimes contradictory and conflicting with each other; multi-head management, fragmentation, and scattered strength, which is not convenient for the unified management and overall arrangement of funds, and cannot form a joint force. There are many projects in the same area, among which the funding of one project comes from multiple channels, the project management is chaotic, it is not convenient for supervision and inspection, and it is difficult to carry out scientific and accurate performance appraisal, which provides local governments and interest groups with opportunities to set up rent and seek rent. leaving the hidden danger of capturing the funds of national projects supporting agriculture and benefiting agriculture, but also increases the marginal cost of project applicants, resulting in unnecessary loss of resources.

The institutional contradiction of the mismatch between financial power and administrative power

Although the reform of the tax-sharing system in 1994 divided the powers between the central government and the local government, the specific definition is relatively vague. Which affairs are independently exercised by the local government and which are implemented by the local government under the leadership of the central government have not been clearly delineated. As a result, the definition of responsibilities and powers between governments at all levels is not clear. Many central governments are responsible for the specific implementation of power requires local grass-roots governments to implement or cooperate in accordance with the central decision-making, this "central treat, local pay" practice, undoubtedly makes the financial burden of local governments even worse.

With the deepening of administrative system reform, government functions have changed from management-oriented to service-oriented, and the gap is gradually expanding. In particular, the abolition of agricultural taxes and various unreasonable fund-raising charges for farmers has completely cut off the main economic sources of county and township grass-roots governments, and directly weakened the financial resources and resource mobilization capacity and motivation of township governments.

The shortage of government investment in agriculture at the grass-roots level not only leads to insufficient supply of new public goods, but also causes serious damage to existing public goods, such as disrepair of irrigation and water conservancy facilities and potholes inequality in rural roads are widespread all over the country. At the same time, the central government has continuously issued a variety of income and expenditure reduction and expenditure reduction policies and standard movements to support agriculture and benefit agriculture, which exceeds the financial affordability of grass-roots county and township governments in many areas with weak economic base, resulting in the deterioration of county and township financial situation. The huge gap between income and expenditure caused by the upward collection of financial power and the downward pressure of administrative power makes the grass-roots government both unable and unintentional to provide rural public goods and services. They mainly focus on making up the funding gap, using the main funds to pay wages, ensure the normal operation of institutions, repay public debts and complete the rigid targets and tasks assigned and transferred by their superiors. so that the local grass-roots government has to intercept and misappropriate all kinds of funds issued by higher departments.

The current mechanism of assessment, appointment and supervision of party and government leading cadres is not perfect.

The problems caused by the alienated incentives and constraints of the current management system for the assessment and promotion of party and government cadres can not be ignored. From the perspective of incentive, if officials want to get promotion opportunities during their term of office, they must exceed the tasks and targets assigned by their superiors, which leads to the vicious competition of officials at the same level in the construction of supporting agriculture in the case of information asymmetry and no direct comparison of performance. vicious competition and short-term project decision-making and achievement. From the perspective of restraint, the post responsibility system and the one-vote veto exert great political pressure on officials, and they must try their best to complete the targets assigned by their superiors. or selectively implement hard indicators that occupy an important position in the assessment and can determine a person's political future. In the case of being unable to complete the tasks of the higher level, there will be collusion between the lower local governments to deal with the tasks assigned by the higher level by making false reports and fabricating figures, deceiving the inspection of the superior, resulting in the actual implementation deviating from the original intention and purpose of the policy.

The root cause of the problem lies not only in the corruption and inaction of subordinate officials, but also in the pressure and institutional defects from superiors. For example, the tenure system and age requirements of party and government cadres will also restrict the behavior of officials. If officials at all levels cannot be promoted within the prescribed age, they will be eliminated by the bureaucracy, and all kinds of powers and benefits will decline, which forces officials to try their best to seek promotion.

For another example, the term of office of local leading cadres is unstable and their tenure is short, which encourages cadres to pursue their political achievements in an unconventional short-term manner. Domestic scholars have found that the average term of office of the secretary of the county party committee is 3.8 years, while that of the secretary of villages and towns is even shorter, and 90% of the term of office is less than three years. The more grass-roots cadres, the shorter the term of office, the faster the mobility. The short term of office leads to the short-term decision-making behavior of leaders, and the pursuit of effective and visible image projects and political achievement projects has become a rational choice for leading cadres, and the first leader responsibility system also provides convenience for their decision-making.

In order to accomplish the rigid task assigned by the superior department, the local government will disregard the actual local economic, social and natural environmental conditions and take all kinds of legal or illegal means to accomplish the task goal as a weight to keep the official position and further promote. The lack of applicability and long-term nature of project planning and design, and the lack of democratic and scientific decision-making mechanism will inevitably lead to inefficient or ineffective investment, resulting in a great waste of funds and resources.

There is a lack of scientific and democratic decision-making mechanism for the application and examination and approval of agricultural projects.

If decision-makers do not rely on public knowledge and personal knowledge when making judgmental decisions, and lack of early field research and scientific demonstration, the decision-making of some projects will depend on personal preferences and subjective wishes, and the will of leaders will replace the will of farmers. the effect of leaders' promises and instructions is stronger than scientific argumentation, resulting in great blindness in project establishment. When setting up a project, it is easy to appear "human relationship project, relationship project, face-saving project, money-giving project". Pulling relations, running projects and power rent-seeking will become shortcuts to the approval and approval of the project. This non-standard project establishment model, on the one hand, makes it impossible to scientifically arrange the priority of project implementation according to the actual needs of rural areas, the projects in urgent need of construction are delayed indefinitely, and the "political achievement project" and "image project" are given priority. On the other hand, it leads to the accumulation of related local investment projects, and the unrelated places can not apply for projects for a long time, resulting in diminishing marginal utility of project investment, inefficient allocation of funds, aggravation of unfair degree, and serious waste of funds.

In recent years, a large number of research results of domestic scholars show that the number of rural public projects invested by the superior government is positively related to the distance from the village committee to the hardened road and the number of people working in the county and township government. It is proved that there are "face project" and "image project" in the supply of rural public goods, and interpersonal relationship will significantly affect the supply of public goods. In the name of social and public demand, some local governments allocate resources in accordance with the idea of planned economy, spend financial funds on productive and profitable areas, and vigorously attract investment and corporatization of the government, resulting in the problem of competing with the people for profits. the use of financial funds to support agriculture and benefit agriculture deviates from the function and purpose of public finance.

Asymmetry of information, power and responsibility leads to mistakes in government decision-making.

The introduction of an one-size-fits-all policy under the condition of asymmetric information leads to the inefficiency and even destructive results of the central policy. If the central government wants to successfully achieve the goal of supporting and benefiting agriculture, it must rely on local governments at all levels, and need the active participation of farmers to supplement and balance. When formulating the supply policy of rural public goods, in the face of a large number of grass-roots local governments, the central government is at an information disadvantage, and it is difficult to observe the performance and efforts of local government officials at a low cost. this means that it is difficult for the central government to sign an effective incentive contract with the local government in advance and implement effective supervision afterwards. Moreover, the central government is not the direct beneficiary of rural public goods, and it is necessary to pay high regulatory costs to identify and supervise the activities of local government agents in advance. The personal benefits and supervision costs of officials in relevant departments of the central government are not equal, which makes them lack the motivation of positive behavior, inspection and supervision is a mere formality, and even the situation that supervisors and agents conspire to seize national agricultural resources. Therefore, the government has a good starting point when formulating policies, but the one-size-fits-all policy is too rigid and inflexible, and it cannot be adjusted according to facts when it is not well suited to the actual situation of various localities, and the distorting factors and effective supervision of implementation are ignored in the implementation of the policy. as a result, the policy effect is out of line with or even contrary to the intention, resulting in a bad result of a good policy, which turns into a wrong decision.