Local governments spend big

Procurement prices of commodities purchased by local governments are quite high and local governments have been reluctant to announce their procurement information, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said Monday in the 2013 Blue Book of Rule of Law.

The CASS statistics, based on deal records for commodities purchased by local governments in the first three quarters of last year, showed that procurement prices for 80 percent of commodities were higher than the market average, resulting in an additional expenditure of 20 million yuan ($3.2 million).

The total scale of government procurement has increased from 100.9 billion yuan in 2002 to 1.13 trillion yuan in 2011, the data showed.

The blue book also said that only 2 out of 26 cities in China announced the deal records for government purchases on their government procurement websites, and 13 refused to announce such information.