It is necessary to put forward constructive adjustment opinions in view of the problems exposed in the use of current fiscal support funds for agriculture.

1. Brief analysis of problems existing in the use of fiscal support funds for agriculture

(1) The amount of funds has "changed" and lacks a stable growth mechanism

The last three In the No. 1 Central Document of 2016, the investment in fiscal support for agriculture was successively proposed as "three significantly higher than the previous year", that is, the increase in fiscal investment to support agriculture should be significantly higher than that of the previous year, and the national fixed asset investment should be used in rural areas. The increment of government land transfer revenue for rural construction is significantly higher than that of the previous year; the "three substantial increases" are to significantly increase the state's investment in rural infrastructure construction and social undertakings development. investment, significantly increase the proportion of government land transfer income and new revenue from cultivated land occupation tax used in agriculture, and significantly increase investment in rural public welfare construction projects in the central and western regions; "three priorities", that is, fiscal expenditures give priority to supporting agriculture In rural areas, fixed assets within the budget are given priority to agricultural infrastructure and rural livelihood projects, and land transfer proceeds are given priority to agricultural land development and rural infrastructure construction. In order to implement the requirements of the central government, all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have formulated and implemented relevant measures and clarified the relevant proportions, especially the indicators of net income from land transfer, farmland occupation tax and urban construction and maintenance tax to support "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". Strict regulations, but in implementation, due to different statistical standards, it is unclear how much of these three incomes are in various places, making it difficult to assess. Some places even include funds used for urban construction in the local "three incomes". The investment in "agriculture" work has led to the "overweight" investment in "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". In addition, the phenomenon of focusing on cities and neglecting rural areas in some places has not been fundamentally reversed. "The problem still exists, the fiscal support for agriculture and stable growth mechanism has not yet been established, and there is still a discount in implementing the top priority requirements. In view of the fact that most agricultural support policies are still short-lived, the government is constantly adjusting the supply of relevant funds based on in-depth understanding. However, this also increases the uncertainty in the amount of fiscal support funds for agriculture, which is mainly reflected in various types of agricultural support funds. The subsidy objects, content, standards and methods of the policy. Taking agricultural subsidies as an example, standards such as direct subsidies for grains, comprehensive direct subsidies for growing grains, subsidies for improved seeds, and subsidies for purchasing agricultural machinery and equipment often change. In this way, it brings a lot of inconvenience to the work of grassroots governments, making it difficult for relevant staff to adapt and making predictions, causing time lags and reducing the efficiency of fund use.

(2) Funding channels are "scattered" and fragmentation is serious

According to incomplete statistics, the current central agencies involved in the allocation and management of fiscal support funds for agriculture include the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, The Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Water Resources, the National Development and Reform Commission and other ministries and commissions, after the funds are released to the local finance department, the departments are connected accordingly, showing a situation of vertical flow within the system. In practice, due to the different sources of funds to support agriculture and different management authority, various departments often "go their own way" without communicating with each other and have overlapping functions. In this way, it is difficult to carry out overall management, is not conducive to implementation supervision, and increases operating costs. At the same time, this "pepper-spreading" method of capital investment can easily cause friction and offset effects in the use of funds, making it difficult to form a synergy, thereby reducing the efficiency of use. Investigating the root cause, in addition to historical inertia, departmental interests are to blame. They all hope to stick to and expand their own resource allocation rights in the process of funding games, and then maintain the current pattern. The key is that the projects are not supporting and difficult to concentrate, and they are divorced from rural development. actual.

(3) Local supporting facilities are “difficult”, and local governments hope to adapt measures to local conditions

In order to encourage governments at all levels to increase their enthusiasm for agricultural investment, most central government funds to support agriculture require local governments to provide Matching. However, regional differences and individual heterogeneity have been relatively ignored in the design of relevant mechanisms, resulting in the current dilemma of difficulty in matching fiscal support funds. On the one hand, in the context of fiscal decentralization, shortage of local financial resources has become a common phenomenon, especially at the county level. Many grassroots governments complain that the more projects they apply for, the more supporting funds are required, which not only makes the functional departments "reluctant" but also creates a "dilemma" for the decision-making departments. On the other hand, given the different levels of economic development in different regions, many underdeveloped regions located in major grain-producing areas are increasingly unable to provide financial support. The larger the scale of agriculture in many places, the more central fiscal support funds are needed to support agriculture, but the more local fiscal supporting funds are needed.

According to this, the more economically developed regions are, the earlier and faster they can obtain central fiscal support funds for agriculture because they can meet the funding requirements; conversely, the more agricultural provinces, the more difficult it is to implement funding matching. While major grain-producing areas bear the important responsibility of ensuring food security and effective supply of agricultural products, they also impose huge financial burdens on local governments.

(4) The efficiency of use is "low", and the actual operations at the grassroots level are forced to "violate regulations"

Although the superior departments that assigned the project and were in charge have clear requirements for project construction, these After project funds are released to the grassroots, especially at the county, district and township levels, most places still use these dispersed project funds in a centralized and unified manner, concentrate on contiguous development, and gradually promote the concentrated areas. When the time comes for project acceptance, no matter what the above Which department came from, and the items for inspection and assessment were generally the same. This kind of "illegal" practice at the grassroots level is indeed a practice worthy of summary and scrutiny. If it is like "sprinkling pepper noodles", it is better to concentrate on continuous development. Of course, to implement this approach, supervision must be in place. Otherwise, it will be easy to rob funds and build "face projects."

(5) Indicator planning is "chaotic" and development planning lacks scientific basis

Although various places have formulated plans for rural economic and social development, plans are dead and people are living. of. In some places, in order to obtain financial support from above-mentioned projects, the planning mainly focuses on the above-mentioned projects, and what plans are made for each project, causing the planning to follow the projects, affecting the integrity and continuity of local development; some projects The competent departments overemphasize the particularity of project construction in their own departments, and either do not allow grassroots integration, or determine project indicators based on impressions, which results in some grassroots units running away and seeing them off in order to obtain project funds, like this. It is difficult to say that for a project that has been won, there will be no problems of "cutting corners" or withholding materials during the construction process. Anyway, the project funds are provided by the superiors, and the acceptance is checked by the superiors. As long as one link is cleared, it will generally be "one pass, all passes". Perhaps this is also a very important reason why the current use of fiscal support funds for agriculture is not efficient.

2. Some suggestions for improving the efficiency of use of fiscal funds to support agriculture

In view of the above existing problems, the author believes that to reverse this situation and effectively improve the efficiency of use of fiscal funds to support agriculture, we can Adjust according to the five-character mantra of "unification", "gathering", "living", "control" and "realization".

(1) Based on actual conditions, the fund management links are "unified"

Unified declaration, unified release and unified assessment of funds for agricultural-related projects. In accordance with the requirements of "bottom-up declaration, top-down release, and comprehensive assessment and acceptance", the grassroots level shall make unified proposals based on the actual situation of local rural economic and social development, and the county-level people's government shall make a unified proposal based on the opinions of the agriculture-related departments at the same level. Projects that need to be constructed in agriculture and rural areas at the same level in the next year should be reported to the municipal people's government for record. After the municipal level reports to the provincial rural work leading group for review, the provincial finance department will allocate relevant project funds based on the review of the provincial rural work leading group. After reaching the corresponding agriculture-related department, the department will directly release the project funds to the county according to the provisions of the project release channel, and be responsible for organizing implementation and service guidance. After the implementation of the project is completed, the Discipline Inspection Commission at the same level and the member units of the rural work leading group in charge of the project will select business backbones to form a comprehensive assessment team to conduct unified acceptance assessment, so as to ensure the four-step process of project approval, fund allocation, project organization and implementation, and assessment and acceptance. They should be organically distinguished to avoid the phenomenon of being both "athletes" and "referees" in the use and management of project funds, and mechanically block the problems of project funds running, leaking, and dripping.

(2) Fund integration, "gathering" of financial support for agriculture

Fund integration means changing scattered investment into centralized construction and increasing the integration of project funds. In accordance with the requirements of "government-led and planned-guided", with the county as the unit and the new rural construction as the leader, except for poverty alleviation, disaster relief, relief and the central government's explicit requirements for direct subsidies to farmers, agricultural-related funds are not allowed to be integrated, and other provincial-level investments are not allowed to be integrated. Fiscal funds at all levels in rural areas can be directly distributed to counties. Only the construction content and quantity are specified, and the right to select sites is left to the county-level government to decide independently. During acceptance, only the county-level construction quality and whether the project construction sites meet the requirements are assessed. . At the same time, in order to avoid "eating from the same big pot", the provincial level can allocate no less than 20% of the total funds as incentive funds to reward counties that have achieved construction results.

Based on the problem of project funds, county-level governments make full use of the four platforms of new rural construction pilot demonstration projects at all levels, agricultural industrialization construction, rural infrastructure construction and rural social undertakings construction projects, and follow the idea of ??"concentrated and contiguous" construction , bundle and use funds with similar nature and similar goals, and roll them out one village at a time, striving to build all the villages in the region into one within a certain period of time, effectively changing the situation that is somewhat typical and difficult to blossom on the surface. situation. Integrate fiscal support funds for agriculture. Comprehensively consider the current status of modern agricultural development and investment characteristics, and integrate fiscal funds to support agriculture with the goal of maximizing the efficiency of the use of fiscal funds to support agriculture. In this way, intermediate costs can be reduced, and "line losses" and "consumption" during the operation of funds can be reduced, thereby continuously regulating the investment direction of fiscal support funds for agriculture and scientifically and rationally allocating public financial resources. Specifically, based on the principles of unchanged fund nature, unchanged arrangement channels, and unchanged supervision and management, the county-level government shall be the unit to coordinate and arrange the financial support funds for agriculture at the same level and concentrate its efforts on major tasks. In terms of the basic point of integration, we can rely on modern agricultural development, farmer education and training, and rural public service system supply as the platform; in terms of the scope of integration, except for special-purpose funds such as disaster relief funds, all fiscal support for agriculture should be integrated as much as possible. The funds are used in "packages"; in terms of key areas of integration, it can focus on agricultural industrialization projects, rural infrastructure and other construction areas; in terms of integration methods, it is necessary to adhere to unified and strict application and project establishment, planning and deployment, organization and operation, Perform supervision and performance evaluation. The key to integrating fiscal support for agriculture is to achieve incentive compatibility of relevant entities and break the original departmental boundaries. This will inevitably involve the readjustment of the interests of all parties. The "interest isomorphism" relationship between various functional departments needs to be clarified. The core is to clarify the integration of funds. Leading department.

(3) Improve the mechanism and make the fund matching method "flexible"

The existing fiscal support fund supporting mechanism needs to be improved. The "linkage effect" produced by the hierarchical matching system of fiscal support for agriculture deserves recognition, but at the same time, the "regressive effect" derived cannot be ignored, and both fairness and efficiency must be taken into consideration. In the new era, it is necessary to scientifically adjust the agricultural support fund allocation mechanism based on actual conditions. On the one hand, we should actively promote the coordination of financial and administrative rights of governments at all levels to support agriculture. In response to the financial difficulties at the grassroots level, higher-level governments must effectively identify the boundaries of government support for agriculture at all levels, appropriately relax financial rights, reduce administrative powers, and take various effective measures to supervise local fiscal supporting funds. On the other hand, the central government must continue to improve the transfer payment system. We attach great importance to the main role of the main grain-producing areas in the central and western regions in ensuring national food security and effective supply of agricultural products. We will continue to increase transfer payments by amending the interest compensation mechanism of main grain-producing areas and banning local fiscal supporting projects to ensure that the country supports agriculture. Policies have been implemented and fiscal support funds for agriculture have been effectively invested. At the same time, we will increase financial assistance to poor and backward areas to ensure that public finance shines brightly on the land. In short, finance must resolutely implement the concept of equalization of public services, face up to regional development differences, and be committed to the rational allocation of fiscal funds to support agriculture nationwide.

(4) Strengthen supervision and "control" the use of funds throughout the process

Intensify the supervision of fiscal funds to support agriculture. For a long time, there has been a mindset of "emphasis on investment and underestimation of benefits" in fiscal support for agriculture. "Emphasis on fund allocation and lightness on fund management" and "emphasis on pre-event preparation and light on mid-event control and ex-post evaluation" have become common behaviors of governments at all levels. In many cases, because it is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the economic, social and ecological benefits generated by the investment of fiscal funds to support agriculture, there is a lack of effective assessment of the effectiveness of the use of fiscal funds to support agriculture. In the construction of some projects, due to information asymmetry and, more importantly, regulatory loopholes in the reward and subsidy matching systems, grassroots authorities often collude to rob fiscal funds, triggering moral hazard and retrograde choices. In fact, although various types of funds have clear ownership and management relationships and rules for specific uses, in actual implementation, the problems of fragmentation and decentralized decision-making are still serious. The next step is to change the previous model of "post-facto inspections and disciplinary penalties", actively absorb diverse subjects, innovate and improve various means, realize supervision of the entire process of fund operation, and establish and improve a comprehensive and multi-faceted system from legal, institutional, and technical perspectives. Financial supervision mechanism for agricultural support funds. Specifically, beforehand, it is necessary to review and control and effectively standardize fund management; during the process, it is necessary to track and monitor to effectively ensure the safety of funds; after the fact, it is necessary to inspect and audit, strengthen the performance evaluation of budget expenditures, reasonably evaluate the effectiveness of funds, and compare performance The evaluation results will be used as a reference factor for arranging projects and funds in the next year.

(5) Strengthen policies and take a “real” approach to agriculture, rural areas and farmers

The “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues are mutually reinforcing, and fiscal support for agriculture policies have a wide impact, so we must consider both the aspects of policy implementation and In addition to necessity and operability, it is also necessary to systematically identify policy completeness, effectively reduce policy deviations, and reasonably avoid policy failures. Especially under the current background that my country's comprehensive national strength is relatively limited and its absolute fiscal strength is relatively insufficient, it is even more important to use fiscal agricultural support funds scientifically and meticulously to improve the efficiency of fund use. On the one hand, in response to the current wave of social development and love for agriculture, it is necessary to rationally predict the effects of fiscal support for agriculture, carry out policy "top-level design" based on the overall development of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", and sort out the intersections between various policies, Face up to externalities, emphasize complementarity, and strengthen collaboration. On the other hand, we should pay close attention to the implementation status of fiscal support agricultural policies from a dynamic perspective. If we find problems such as missing goals, weak means, and unclear scope of policy implementation due to formulation errors, we must take early measures to prevent policy losses from magnifying. In addition, we must pay attention to the diversification in the implementation of fiscal support for agriculture policies, focusing on regional differences and individual heterogeneity. While governments at all levels improve implementation supervision, we should advocate the integration of some policy implementation with grassroots conditions to enhance applicability. and feasibility.