How much does the national poverty alleviation spend every year? What on earth are hundreds of billions of poverty alleviation funds?

To get rid of poverty, you have to spend money. More than 70 million people living in poverty across the country will be lifted out of poverty, and at least 100 billion yuan will be needed in the next five years.

A few days ago, at the Central Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the investment in poverty alleviation and development should match the requirements of winning the battle against poverty.

Under the grand goal of getting rid of poverty, no matter how to increase investment, funds are always limited, and "precious ammunition" cannot tolerate a trace of waste. General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed to achieve "six precision" in poverty alleviation, one of which is the accurate use of funds.

How on earth should poverty alleviation funds be spent in order to really use the "blade"?

How much does the national poverty alleviation spend every year?

From 2011 to 2014, the special poverty alleviation funds of the central government increased from 27.2 billion yuan to 43.3 billion yuan, with an average annual increase of 18.1%. This year, the central budget for poverty alleviation has been increased to 46.745 billion yuan.

The investment in poverty alleviation at the provincial level is also considerable. In Henan, for example, this year, the central government has invested 2.06925 billion yuan in Henan financial special poverty alleviation funds, and the provincial budget has invested 524.34 million yuan in financial poverty alleviation and development funds, which is about equivalent to the amount invested by the central government. If it is estimated at this ratio, the special poverty alleviation funds at the corresponding level in 31 provinces across the country will reach more than 11 billion yuan.

This means that in 2015 alone, the central government and various provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities invested at least nearly 60 billion yuan in special financial funds for poverty alleviation and development.

This is far from the whole story. In addition to financial special poverty alleviation funds, various industries and departments also have a large amount of poverty alleviation funds. According to incomplete statistics, since the 12th five-year Plan, Henan Province has invested more than 48.3 billion yuan in social undertakings in poor areas, more than 50.5 billion yuan in rural highway construction, more than 15 billion yuan in agriculture, such as irrigation and water conservancy and safe drinking water, and more than 2 billion yuan in work relief.

In other words, Henan Province alone, the average annual poverty alleviation funds for the industry is not less than 23 billion yuan. According to a rough calculation, China invests hundreds of billions of yuan in special funds and industry departments for poverty alleviation and development every year.

There is so much money and heavy responsibility that there is no room for carelessness.

Two stories, one positive and one negative

Qi Meizhi, a poor family in Lixi Village, Zhaoying Township, Lankao County, Henan Province, has received 4000 yuan to increase household income this year. How should this money be spent?

"originally, the county wanted us to raise piglets, saying that when the pigs were fat and sold to the meat factory, the pigs could continue to be raised." Qi Meizhi said, "but many poor households are unwilling. One is inexperienced, the other is dirty, and the third is afraid that pigs will get sick and lose money."

If you don't raise pigs, then what are you doing? After many visits, the village task force and village cadres learned that most poor households most want to work on their doorstep, not only have a stable income, but also take care of farm work and the elderly and children.

Coincidentally, Zhai Baochang, a small owner in the village, is trying to open a glass door and window factory. Zhai Jicheng, the leader of the task force, and Zhai Jinlu, the village branch secretary, went to Zhai Baochang to discuss whether it was possible to allow poor households to buy shares in the form of fund-raising, so as to find a way out of poverty for poor families, and partially solve the problem of funding for Zhai Baochang to open a new factory.

The two sides hit it off. In July this year, the glass door and window factory was set up and put into operation with a loan of 400000 yuan and 25 poor households worth 4000 yuan per household, totaling 100000 yuan. The factory gives priority to the poor households who have the ability to work, and those who do not have the ability to work shall pay a fixed dividend every year.

Qi Meizhi works in this factory. She said with a smile: "I can earn more than 2000 yuan a month, and there is a share dividend every half a year, which can be divided into about 2000 yuan."

In this story, poverty alleviation funds are spent happily. In the next story, the money is a little awkward. At the request of the interviewees, when telling the story, we have to hide the names of place names and people.

It happened in a mountain town in the west. The county has set aside more than 2 million yuan to help the poor, but the town has made it difficult to spend it. Originally, as the content of industrial poverty alleviation, their superiors asked them to increase their seedling area by more than 2000 mu, with a subsidy of 1000 yuan per mu, totaling more than 2 million yuan.

This is supposed to be a good thing, ah, but almost every household in the town grows seedlings, and there is not much spare land, so it is impossible to complete the task of adding new area, but the money must be spent, so what should we do? A meeting.

Some cadres said that all farmers with seedlings should be shared equally according to the planting area. Immediately, some people objected that this was money for helping the poor, and many large growers were not poor and could not take the money. Some cadres have suggested that subsidies should only be given to poor households who set up archives and set up cards. Immediately, some people objected that this is a special fund for seedlings, which cannot be taken by poor households who have not planted seedlings, and the seedlings planted by poor households in the town add up to less than 2000 mu, and the money still cannot be spent.

Finally, after several meetings, the cadres finally racked their brains to spend the money in a non-illegal way. As for how it was spent, the interviewees kept it a secret, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Who is in charge of how to spend the money?

If you spend the same amount of money, why do you have a completely different effect? The key is who has the final say on how the money is spent. It is difficult to spend money in the town. If the superiors listen to the following opinions, the decision is more in line with reality, and embarrassment is not inevitable.

The traditional poverty alleviation model in our country is that the superior makes the plan, the next to implement, the county and other provinces and cities to arrange, the township, the village and other counties to arrange. Now the right to use aid-the-poor funds has been devolved to the county level, and the county has the decision-making power, but townships and villages are still waiting for arrangements.

In a state-level poverty-stricken county in Henan Province, there are 13 poverty alleviation offices, of which three people have been unable to work for a long time due to illness and other reasons. When the reporter was interviewing, half of them went out to clean up. It turned out that the local "Chuangwei", each department contracted a section of road hygiene, three days a week had to send people to sweep the streets.

Ten people are responsible for the poverty alleviation plan for tens of thousands of poor people in the county, the allocation of tens of millions of yuan in aid-the-poor funds, and have to take on some irrelevant work from time to time. How can we ensure that this plan is done scientifically and accurately? The poverty alleviation departments themselves complain that there are too few people and too many things, and that their power is light and heavy.

It is inevitable that planning is out of touch with reality. In 2010, four units, including Machang Township Government in Zhenning County, Guizhou Province, organized and implemented projects such as Rosa roxburghii roxburghii and walnut planting. Due to the failure of the previous demonstration to take into account local climate and soil conditions, the project effect was not good, resulting in a loss of 3.3723 million yuan; in 2010, the Poverty Alleviation Office of Xihe County, Gansu Province, allocated 100000 yuan for the construction of a village sports center project, which was demolished immediately after the completion of the center due to unreasonable planning.

Perhaps planning will always have a certain degree of error, "accurate use of funds" is to maximize the elimination of such errors.

Funds "sleep", who can "wake up"?

In 2014, the budget of Shanxi Province used only half of the discount loans for poverty alleviation leading enterprises and industrial support projects: 88.77 million yuan discount funds, 43.5 million yuan issued, half lying on the account did not go out.

The money can't be spent here, but it can't be used by poverty alleviation enterprises on the other side.

Also in 2014, Shanxi Poverty Alleviation Office successfully issued 115 million yuan of private bonds for Taiyuan double synthetic Food Co., Ltd. and Taiyuan Materia Medica Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., a hundred enterprises and thousands of villages industrial poverty alleviation project.

"when we applied to issue private bonds, the poverty alleviation department promised to win preferential interest discount policies for us, but now we have successfully issued bonds for more than a year, and the discount has not been settled yet." Dai Hailiang, financial director of double synthetic foods, said.

The poverty alleviation department over there is also aggrieved. "on the one hand, the government's budget discount funds cannot be used, on the other hand, innovative forms of financial poverty alleviation, such as private debt raising, are not supported by national policies." Zhao Junchao, director of Shanxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation Office Industrial Station, said.

According to the current regulations, only "regular troops" such as bank loans can enjoy interest discounts, "wild ways" such as private bonds can only be sidelined, and tens of millions of yuan of poverty alleviation funds continue to "sleep" on the books.

Why is this? This is similar to the fact that it took a lot of effort for more than 2 million poverty alleviation funds to be spent in that town in the west, because the planning for the use of poverty alleviation funds is out of touch with reality, but one result is that it is not needed, and the other is that it is not needed.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. According to the audit in Henan Province, by the end of September 2014, 53 counties had accumulated 1.819 billion yuan in poverty alleviation funds. The annual audit report of Guizhou Province in 2014 revealed that 174 million yuan of poverty alleviation projects were poorly implemented due to poor project selection, lack of technical training and services, etc. In addition, 796 million yuan of poverty alleviation funds in 20 counties have been idle for more than six months, of which 192 million yuan has been idle for more than two years.

What shall I do? Policy makers at any level should be good at listening to public opinions and adapting measures to local conditions, instead of talking on paper and sticking to conventions. The use of poverty alleviation funds is not decided by the superiors, nor is it decided by the poor households themselves, but by everyone.

to know is easy , but to do is difficult. This requires the trust and decentralization of superiors, the responsibility and innovation of subordinates, the flexibility of policies, the rigour of the system, and the need for implementers to be light and seamless, which is by no means an easy task.

It is necessary to "swatter flies and remove moths", but also to improve the level of decision-making.

The reporter combed more than 100 audit reports from various provinces across the country from 2011 to 2014 and found that it is not uncommon for poverty alleviation funds to be "leaked". Some enterprises fraudulently obtain poverty alleviation funds in the form of "fabricating false contracts", "false projects" and "repeated declaration projects". Some government departments use poverty alleviation funds to treat, give gifts, receive, and even travel, buy cars, and build buildings.

These uncovered cases of violations and violations of discipline are varied and distressing.

Henan audit found that from 2010 to 2014, the "blue foreman" of secondary vocational education trained 74400 poor students, nearly half of whom made up false identities and training information and collected nearly 100 million yuan in poverty alleviation funds.

In this regard, Liu Quan, director of the Henan Provincial Audit Office, said that the provincial poverty alleviation office commissioned three accounting firms to inspect 37120 "blue-collar class" students from the 141 training bases involved. Up to now, relevant cities and counties have been instructed to recover 1.804 million yuan in subsidies collected from 10 training bases.

At the same time, the Henan Poverty Alleviation Office also revoked the training qualifications of 27 training bases for violations of discipline and regulations, and dealt with 7 relevant responsible persons of poverty alleviation departments and 70 training base supervisors and staff.

Judging from the feedback from various places, many poverty alleviation funds "flies and worms" are being cleaned up. Improving the decision-making level of poverty alleviation investment is more crucial than "swatting flies and eliminating moths."

If poverty is compared to a disease, then poverty alleviation funds are a steady stream of "therapeutic injections". Accurate poverty alleviation should not only ensure that the "injection" is injected into the "sick body", but also ensure that the "injection" is injected into the right "position" in order to maximize the curative effect.

Intercepting and misappropriating poverty alleviation funds is like stealing "injections" or letting "injections" be short. As long as the system is strict and supervision is in place, it is relatively easy to find and eliminate. If the "injection" is not used properly, it is not so easy to find and judge. By the time it is discovered, the money has often been spent, and there are not many opportunities to mend it. This is the biggest threat to "accuracy".

A bright hole is easy to mend, but a dark hole is difficult to defend. It is easy to use but difficult to use, and there is still a lot of way to go to meet General Secretary Xi Jinping's requirements for the precise use of poverty alleviation funds.