Establishing a Sound Township (Town) Fiscal System

In 1984, the Municipality of Tianjin began to conduct township-level fiscal experimentation, using Ninghe County as the first for experimentation. In April 1985, the Ministry of Finance promulgated the "Methods of Township Fiscal Experimentation" under the aegis of the no. 55 document of the 1985 Budget Papers. Then, on the basis of the stipulations announced in the two aforementioned documents and the experience of the experimentation carried out in Ninghe County, the municipal Bureau of Finance and the Tianjin branch of the Chinese Agricultural Bank jointly drafted, under the aegis of the no. 54 document of the 1985 Budget Papers, the "Detailed Regulations for the Implementation of Township Fiscal Management in Tianjin Municipality," which was promulgated in December 1985 and which stipulated that experimental implementation should begin on January 1, 1986. At the same time, the document entitled "The General Accounting System for Township Fiscal Management in Tianjin Municipality" was formulated. This was distributed to every suburban county in 1986 for their implementation. By the end of the year, basic-level budgetary systems had been generally and universally established in the various townships affiliated with and under the jurisdiction of Ninghe County, Jixian County, the Western Suburbs district, the Northern Suburbs district, the Eastern Suburbs district, the Hangu district and the Dagang district, and the system for districts and counties to administer the fiscal budget management system of the townships and towns had been clearly stipulated and instituted. Meanwhile, some of the townships in the Southern Suburbs district also established a primary-level budgetary management system, and a township-level fiscal management system is scheduled to be established in January 1987 in Wuqing County, Baodi County, and Jinghai County, and in Tanggu district.