City denies debt claim over Asian Games
By Richard Fu |
February 28, 2011, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
GUANGZHOU'S finance chief has denied a local legislator's claim that the southern city had incurred huge debt after spending more than 250 billion yuan (US$38 billion) on hosting last year's Asian Games.
Zhang Jieming, director of the Guangzhou Financial Bureau, told Southern Metropolis News that the operating budget for the event was around 13.6 billion yuan, and actual expenditure was also around that level.
Zhong Nanshan, a Guangzhou People's Congress deputy, said last week that the Games in November had cost a total of 257 billion yuan and left the city with a debt of more than 210 billion yuan.
He gave the figures during the annual session of the city's legislature, citing his own research.
Other lawmakers wanted to know how the budget had become so inflated.
While the Games would have helped raise the city's international profile, such a huge debt would affect efforts to improve people's livelihoods, they said.
Infrastructure
Zhang didn't include the costs of other urban infrastructure in his figure for the Games budget. He said: "Even without the Games, Guangzhou would still have spent around 15 billion yuan on urban infrastructure per year."
Zhang said he had been forced into revealing the figure by Zhong's speech and said Zhong's calculations were wrong.
However, the government wouldn't be able to provide full details of its expenditure until 2013 because there were lots of follow-up work to do, such as the disposal of related assets, Zhang said.
Zhong said he was not satisfied with Zhang's explanation and would raise the issue at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress - of which he is also a deputy - in Beijing on Saturday.
Zhong said he understood Zhang's difficulty in revealing budget details and his main purpose for raising the issue was to win more financial support for Guangzhou, for a long time a major tax contributor to the provincial and central government.
He said that the central government should consider making a great contribution in sponsorship toward the costs of the Asian Games, just as it did for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai last year.
Zhang Jieming, director of the Guangzhou Financial Bureau, told Southern Metropolis News that the operating budget for the event was around 13.6 billion yuan, and actual expenditure was also around that level.
Zhong Nanshan, a Guangzhou People's Congress deputy, said last week that the Games in November had cost a total of 257 billion yuan and left the city with a debt of more than 210 billion yuan.
He gave the figures during the annual session of the city's legislature, citing his own research.
Other lawmakers wanted to know how the budget had become so inflated.
While the Games would have helped raise the city's international profile, such a huge debt would affect efforts to improve people's livelihoods, they said.
Infrastructure
Zhang didn't include the costs of other urban infrastructure in his figure for the Games budget. He said: "Even without the Games, Guangzhou would still have spent around 15 billion yuan on urban infrastructure per year."
Zhang said he had been forced into revealing the figure by Zhong's speech and said Zhong's calculations were wrong.
However, the government wouldn't be able to provide full details of its expenditure until 2013 because there were lots of follow-up work to do, such as the disposal of related assets, Zhang said.
Zhong said he was not satisfied with Zhang's explanation and would raise the issue at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress - of which he is also a deputy - in Beijing on Saturday.
Zhong said he understood Zhang's difficulty in revealing budget details and his main purpose for raising the issue was to win more financial support for Guangzhou, for a long time a major tax contributor to the provincial and central government.
He said that the central government should consider making a great contribution in sponsorship toward the costs of the Asian Games, just as it did for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai last year.
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