BEIJING, June 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese auditors found 330 million yuan (48.5 million U.S. dollars) in government subsidies was wrongly given to 62,900 households whose income exceeded prescribed standards last year, the chief auditor said Wednesday.
Liu Jiayi, head of the National Audit Office (NAO), made the statement in a report submitted to the 15th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.
Of the unqualified households that received the subsistence subsidy, 11,900 were found to own private enterprises, cars or at least two real estate properties, Liu said.
Auditing also found that nine cities, unidentified by Liu, gave 869,000 yuan (128,000 U.S. dollars) in low-rent housing subsidies and 74 apartments to 705 unqualified families last year.
Liu said the main reasons for the misallocations were due to poor scrutiny of the applicants' qualifications, a lack of supervision systems and a slow information system that failed to promptly update the income and property status of applicants.
The report said only 78.72 percent of new funds from central government for agricultural development last year went to main agricultural production areas, failing the requirement of more than 80 percent.
Liu revealed that a total of 714 million yuan (105 million U.S. dollars) had been extracted, held up or embezzled by local governments.x The improperly used funds included 357 million yuan (52.5 million U.S. dollars) for comprehensive agricultural development, 306 million yuan (45 million U.S. dollars) for rural drinking water safety projects and 51 million yuan (7.5 million U.S. dollars) for urban minimum living guarantee funds.
The Ministry of Water Resources sent out supervision teams to 19 provinces to inspect funding use after learing of abuses involving safe drinking water projects, and 8.25 million yuan (1.2 million U.S. dollars) in embezzled funds had been retrieved or returned, Liu said.