Observation on the "empty Shell" of Rural Collective economy

It's hard to do things without money, and the service can't keep up.

--Observation on "Shelling" of Rural Collective Economy (Part I)

At present, some rural collective economies in the west have become normal, affecting the development of village-level public welfare undertakings and the supply of public services. However, China has not yet established a public finance system covering urban and rural areas, and a large number of people's livelihood needs in rural areas still depend on the already weak village collective economy.

The embarrassment of "no money to do things" makes it difficult for many village communities to change their backward development in the short term.

Infrastructure is difficult to develop and public services are difficult to provide

Half a month reporter visits found that rural collective economic organizations have no operating income or low income village community accounted for the majority, these "shell villages", only a small amount of financial transfer payment, even grass-roots organizations are more difficult to operate, the development of rural public welfare undertakings, to provide services for farmers is even more impossible to talk about.

Collective economic organizations are "empty shells", which are concentrated in the difficulties in the development of rural public welfare infrastructure and the provision of public services. Recently, half a month talk reporter came to Chongqing Fuling District Daxi Village, the village almost every family empty. In the simple village public service center, village committee director Zhou Dewu admitted, in such poor villages as Daxi, hollow village, to develop public infrastructure, really difficult.

"There are only two pieces of village collective income: a tea factory has transferred 80 mu of collective land with an annual rent of 2000 yuan; the reservoir has an annual contract fee of 1500 yuan." What can you do with more than 3000 yuan a year?" Zhou Dewu said, In order to improve the village appearance, The village to the government for projects, Set up farmers concentrated residential sites, But among them greening, Public toilets, Entertainment facilities and other supporting facilities need more than 800,000 yuan, The government project funds have nearly 400,000 yuan subsidies, The gap is not small.

"In addition to the government investing money to build public facilities such as farmers 'new villages, where else can I raise money?" Zhou Dewu said that due to the large fund gap, many supporting facilities are not perfect, the life of the farmers living in it is not convenient, and everyone is not satisfied.

In order to promote the construction of rural public welfare undertakings and infrastructure, the government has continuously increased investment in water conservancy, roads and industrial development over the years, but financial investment only solves the problem of project construction, and follow-up management and sustainable operation still need to rely on self-raised funds of village communities. However, the "empty shell" state of rural collective economy leads to that village communities have no money to invest and cannot afford to invest. Rural benefit projects are often "unattended, have no money to manage and have long-term effects difficult to play".

In Feixiandong Village, Fengdu County, Chongqing, in order to solve the problem of "drinking water difficulties" for the masses, the county water conservancy department specially installed more than 10 kilometers of water pipes into households. However, due to the lack of daily maintenance funds in the village, some water intake points leaked and were forced to abandon in just a few years. Some pipe networks were blocked, and farmers 'homes were cut off from water. Peng Ruihua, secretary of the village party branch, said that there are many projects benefiting farmers now, but the village cannot afford to provide management and protection funds. The project "landed" and benefited farmers for a long time.

"Funds need to be 'marginal,' sometimes relying on village cadres to advance funds."

On the one hand, the collective economy of village communities is "empty shell" and unable to undertake the requirements of public utilities development; on the other hand, in the face of the realistic needs of the masses to improve the appearance of villages and improve the service level, some village communities have to "beg for help" everywhere.

In the process of poverty alleviation in Baiguo Village, Fuling District, Chongqing, 8.8 kilometers of village community roads have been built. The project cost is more than 1.3 million yuan. The government fixed investment is 1 million yuan. There is still a fund gap of nearly 300,000 yuan. The village cannot afford to invest, so the village cadres have to find the District Civil Affairs Bureau and ask for fund support.

Township government is also an important object of village community "alms". A local cadre in a town in Chongqing told reporters that in 2014, the town will renovate more than 160 ponds and reservoirs, with an average financial investment of more than 50,000 yuan per port and an actual project cost of more than 60,000 yuan per port. For this alone, the town finance will accumulate more than 1.5 million yuan. This town has relatively strong financial resources at the local grass-roots level. In the face of the investment demand for public infrastructure funds in village communities, it can barely support it. Some towns with weak financial resources are unable to do so.

There is no door to "charity", and village cadres have to pay for it from their own pockets. Baiguo village branch secretary Yang Jian said, In the past village community financial resources are very weak, In order to carry out construction, Still owe more than 400,000 yuan debt. In addition to deducting government subsidies, there is a gap of more than 100,000 yuan in the construction of public service center in the village. He has to borrow money from the bank for construction in his own name.

Poor management and lagging reform restrict the development of collective assets

At present, it is still difficult to strengthen rural collective economic organizations at the grass-roots level, whether based on resource endowment or operation status. Reporters interviewed in western rural areas found that in recent years, through the development of resources, revitalization of assets and other means, the development of rural collective economic organizations in various places has achieved certain results, but overall, the rural collective economic strength is still not strong, and the total amount of assets that can be disposed of and operated is not large.

Poor rural management system also affects the enthusiasm of village collective assets disposal and management. At present, most administrative villages exercise the collective asset management function by replacing the village collective economic organization with the village branch two committees. The "village enterprise" is not divided, and the functions of village branch two committees and village collective asset management intersect. As far as the village branch committees are concerned, the daily administrative affairs such as the construction of grass-roots party organizations and community public management services are complicated, the revitalization of village collective assets is not included in the performance evaluation of village cadres, and there is no incentive mechanism and effective supervision mechanism.

At the same time, rural collective property rights are not clear, so that rural collective assets disposal and management also lack policy support. According to statistics, most village collective economic organizations in Chongqing have not carried out property rights reform, traditional property rights subject is false, property rights are vague, and there are institutional obstacles to the use, investment and development of collective assets. Members of rural collective economic organizations nominally "everyone has a share" of collective assets, but actually "everyone has no share", which is not conducive to the standardized operation of rural collective economy.

Village-level "cow hair debt", showing the dilemma of development

--Observation on "Shelling" of Rural Collective Economy (Part II)

In order to maintain operation and carry out construction in some rural villages of our country, some debts have appeared to varying degrees. These small and scattered "cattle hair debts" are like a mirror, which directly reflects the embarrassment in the current collective economic development process.

Love-hate construction debt

In recent years, the state has given more and more support to rural areas, such as new rural construction, rural roads, industrial support, rural tourism and other projects, all adopt the method of "a little bit from the state, a little support from the city, district and county, and a little bit from Murakami" to raise funds. However, under the background that the rural collective economy is "empty shell" and unable to provide supporting funds, and "one matter is discussed", it is difficult for the masses to raise funds for labor, for some village communities, the use of national funds for agriculture has become a "dilemma", and with the project, it is possible to owe debts.

Recently, half-monthly reporters have visited more than 10 administrative villages and found that most of these villages have varying degrees of debt burden, with more than one million yuan and as little as one hundred or two hundred thousand yuan. One of the reasons for asking about the source of debt is the debt of rural construction. Some village roads are hardened, and the government generally subsidizes more than 500,000 yuan per kilometer, while the actual construction cost is generally more than 700000 yuan, and the gap in the middle needs to be raised by the village community itself. During the interview, some village cadres told reporters that if infrastructure such as village roads cannot be raised by farmers through "one matter, one discussion" and want to start projects, they will have to borrow money for construction.

"other villages borrow money for construction, but our village can't even borrow money, because the village has no income at all, and its operation depends on government subsidies. If we can't afford to borrow money, who is willing to lend it to us?" During an interview in a village, a cadre told the reporter that the village community could not afford to raise money and wanted to benefit farmers, so sometimes the quality of the project had to be discounted. When the whole village was lifted out of poverty in 2014, 5.5 kilometers of access roads were hardened, but due to the low standard of financial subsidies, the village could not afford money, the intensity of unit capital investment could not meet the requirements, and there was a problem with the quality of the project. When the village branch secretary took the reporter to inspect the village road on the spot, he said that because the cement label was not enough and the thickness of the laying was not enough, the road was now "blistering" and the vehicles were covered with dust and potholes everywhere.

When visiting another village, the reporter also found a similar phenomenon. 11 kilometers of the newly built village road in this village is also because of insufficient funds. The width of the village road is only 3.5 meters and can only allow one car to pass through. The crowd laughingly calls it a "one-way road."

Muddle-headed bad debt

In addition to construction debts, some village-level debts are caused by agriculture-related policies or the development of village collective economic organizations, especially those muddled debts left over from history in some villages, which no one dares to write off. what's more, they have no right to write off, which has become a "bad debt" that cannot be resolved.

In the interview, some local agricultural cadres said that one kind of debt is a historical policy debt: when the agricultural tax was not abolished, the phenomenon of farmers defaulting on the collective "three proposals and five unification" was serious, and in order to collect overall planning fees and agricultural taxes, township streets issued methods requiring cadres' wages to be "linked" and "vetoed by one vote" with taxes and fees, and some villages had to borrow money to pay them. In some places, the debt formed by borrowing money to pay off is even as high as tens of millions of yuan.

At the same time, during the clean-up of the "three capital" in some rural areas, it was also found that some village communities had extra accounts and foreign debts, and a small number of village cadres went out to handle affairs, put on pomp and extravagance, and spent a lot of money lavishly, resulting in a lot of muddled debts. The reporter once interviewed in a certain place and found that an administrative village had a "food and drink debt" of nearly 10,000 yuan, which had been in the hands of village cadres for three terms, and the current cadres could not tell how the debt was owed, and every time the village community finance was cleaned up, it had to be put on the account. Creditors often take IOUs to the village committee to ask for debts, and the current village cadres have no choice but to shirk, "who owes it and asks for it" has become a "bad debt" that has dragged on for more than 10 years.

Local cadres frankly said that the "muddle-headed debt" in rural areas is still due to lax management of village-level collective economic revenues and expenditures and lack of effective constraints. Many cadres think that village-level debt belongs to the category of villagers' autonomy, and it is better to do more than to do less, and the more you manage, the more troublesome it is. At the same time, the villagers have weak supervision over village-level debts, their due rights have not been fully respected, it is difficult to interfere with and supervise the abnormal income and expenditure in the publicity of village affairs, and the democratic financial management and democratic supervision of the village community are in the form and formality, which also creates obstacles to the clean-up and resolution of village-level debts.

Supervise and control village debt in a reasonable range

In the interview, some industry insiders believe that the occurrence of debt in rural collective economic development is a normal phenomenon, and the key is to have a benign supervision and disposal mechanism for debt. It is necessary to clarify the responsibility, the easy before the difficult, and deal with it in accordance with the rules and regulations in accordance with the law. As the main body of this work, village-level organizations should strive to resolve debts by increasing income and reducing expenditure, invigorating collective mountain forests, waters, real estate, land and other stock assets, and disposing of idle assets.

Experts suggest that we should increase financial investment in rural areas, reduce or cancel the supporting funding requirements for rural support projects, adhere to the principle of planning first in the implementation of rural infrastructure construction and the development of public welfare undertakings, and do our best to avoid new debts and enhance the ability of village-level organizations to resolve debts. At the same time, we should establish a "four-in-one" village-level financial supervision system of village-level democratic supervision, township accounting supervision, government audit supervision and network real-time supervision, and strictly control the growth of village-level debt.

Invigorate the stock, do a good job in increment, and make a bigger "cake" to find a way out

-- observation on the "empty shell" of rural collective economy (part III)

All localities are exploring how to solve the problem of "empty shell" of rural collective economy. In recent years, many village communities in Chongqing have experienced a decrease in village-level debt and an increase in collective income. After a careful study of the reasons, it is not difficult to find that the key to the enhancement of the economic strength of these village communities is to rely on reform: one is to invigorate the stock, rely on the reform of the property right system of rural collective assets, and consolidate the cornerstone of the long-term development of the collective economy; the second is to do a good job in increment, through straightening out the interest mechanism between urban and rural areas, and building an interactive platform of urban and rural resources, so as to truly realize "leading the township by the city and promoting agriculture by industry".

Property right reform straightens out the relationship of interests

In many places, especially in the urban and rural areas where the economy is more developed, an important reason why it is difficult for rural collective economic organizations to become bigger and stronger lies in the confusion of collective economic property rights and weak supervision.

To enlarge the "cake" of the collective economy, one of Chongqing's explorations is to straighten out the relationship of property rights, invigorate the stock and implement the quantitative reform of collective assets and equity, so as to ensure that the collective economy becomes bigger and stronger in terms of system. In Jiulongpo, Shapingba and other areas of Chongqing, many rural collective economic organizations also quantify the stock funds and assets of the village community, and establish a governance system with clear property rights, clear rights and responsibilities, and perfect governance, so as to maintain and increase their value. some village farmers' shareholders can realize dividends of tens of thousands of yuan a year.

Gonghe Village, Huayan Town, Jiulongpo District, on the outskirts of the city, is facing this "hurdle." Since the establishment of the village collective enterprise in 1985, after more than 20 years of accumulation, the total amount of collective assets has reached 14.83 million yuan in 2006, with a steady increase in income, mainly from factory buildings and facade leasing.

After the demutualization reform of village collective assets, the initial results have been shown. After the implementation of the demutualization reform of village collective assets in Gonghe Village, the total annual dividend amounts to more than one million yuan, and the per capita dividend of villagers is 300 yuan. Liu Chunxiang, a villager of Gonghe Village, said that his family has a total of 107 shares, which can be divided into more than 2000 yuan a year according to the standard of 20 yuan per share. In addition, according to the collective assets distribution plan of Gonghe Village, people over the age of 60, such as Liu Chunxiang, can receive a living subsidy of 1000 yuan a year from the village collective economy.

The demutualization of village collective assets also straightens out the relationship between villagers' committees and collective economic organizations. Many farmers said that in the past, everyone had a share in collective assets, but in fact, a small number of people had the final say, and there were loopholes in the system. After the demutualization reform, the villagers have become shareholders, which can better exercise the right to know and supervision and ensure the normal operation of collective economic organizations.

In Xishan Village, Jiulongpo District, villager Luo Xi said: "after the demutualization of collective assets, everyone in my family has been given a 'collective asset equity certificate'. If you have shares, you can pay dividends, and if you have more shares, you can get more shares."

The transaction of "Dipiao" feeds the countryside and enhances the collective strength of the village community.

Another means for Chongqing to develop the rural collective economy is to increase the increment and strengthen the collective economic organization. In Baiguo Village, Fuling District, at its peak, the collective debt of the village used to be more than 400,000 yuan, but now the debt has been basically eliminated. Yang Jie, secretary of the village branch, said that the key to the change is that the ginkgo village has realized the reclamation of more than 110 mu of homestead by making use of the Chongqing "land ticket" trading platform. the village collective economy received nearly 3 million yuan in compensation.

As a pilot area for the comprehensive reform of urban and rural areas, Chongqing has explored the transaction of the index "land ticket" for urban and rural construction land. According to the regulations, if the farmers' homestead and its ancillary facilities are reclaimed, after deducting the reclamation cost, all the net income will be returned to the countryside and paid to the farmers and rural collective economic organizations that reclaim the homestead and its ancillary facilities according to the proportion of 85 ∶ 15. For the reclamation of rural public facilities, public welfare undertakings and other construction land, after deducting the reclamation cost, the surplus price shall be transferred to the corresponding rural collective economic organizations. The proceeds are mainly used for the social security of the members of the collective organization and the construction of infrastructure and public service facilities.

Shanpingtang, Huangshi Village, Yunyang County, has renovated more than 20 ponds in recent years, with the government investing an average of 65000 yuan per mouth and supporting village-level facilities of 15000 yuan. The reason why the village can afford the money is to rely on "land ticket" transactions. Fan Guangzhi, secretary of the village branch, said that since 2012, the village has reclaimed more than 20 mu of homestead and earned more than 400,000 yuan, most of which has been spent on such rural public welfare infrastructure transformation.

Speed up reform and strengthen policy tilt

In the view of many industry experts, combined with the reform practice of some places in Chongqing, in order to expand and strengthen the rural collective economy, it is necessary to continue to steadily promote the pilot reform of quantifying the rights of rural collective assets, on the basis of comprehensively completing the liquidation and verification of assets, establish asset accounts and resource registers, define the ownership of collective funds, resources and assets in accordance with the law, straighten out the relationship of property rights, and adopt the methods of auction, leasing, home ownership, stock cooperation and so on. Invigorate rural collective idle assets.

At the same time, supportive policies to promote the disposal and management of rural collective assets should be formulated as soon as possible. In view of the fact that the rural collective economy is weak and the development foundation is poor, and that the rural collective economic organizations assume the responsibility of maintaining the operation of rural grass-roots organizations and providing public facilities and services, which should be borne by the financial burden, the government finance should increase the support to the rural collective economy, and special funds can be arranged to integrate the funds of various departments. We will support rural collective economic organizations in the construction of infrastructure and the purchase of equipment and machinery necessary for the development of production, and provide loan discounts, financing guarantees and incentives for projects that increase collective economic income.