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Shi Jiangtao

With memories of Beijing's Olympics already fading,  the mainland's top auditor admits his office has  not yet looked into the spending behind the world's most expensive Games. 
Liu Jiayi,  auditor general of the National Audit Office, said  yesterday that audits of Olympics-related projects and the expenditure of the Beijing Olympics organising committee (Bocog) would be conducted this year.
His remarks come as criticism mounts  on the mainland over the wait for the much-anticipated  report into  spending on the Olympics.
Information on the Olympics budget has been controlled tightly by the government. While Beijing claims  Bocog's operating cost  and spending on venues totalled more than US$4 billion,   overseas media has  estimated a cost of  US$43 billion. 
'It is still too early to say whether the actual spending exceeded the budget,' Mr Liu said, without  explaining why the audit was taking so long. 
But he admitted that irregularities and other problems had been found in the management of Olympics- related funds during initial investigations last year. 
He added that the problems had been  fixed once they were pointed out to the organisers. 
Meanwhile, Mr Liu also said his office had followed closely the management of the 4 trillion yuan (HK$4.5 trillion) stimulus package  to prevent extravagance, waste and corruption. Local governments  had done a good job so far, he said.
Auditors would continue to focus on the new infrastructure projects  and those related to reconstruction after the massive Sichuan earthquake  last May to make sure the money was well spent.
'The top priority of this year's economic work is to ensure steady and relatively fast economic growth.'  
He also stressed the importance of preventing a resurgence of energy intensive and heavy polluting industries in reviving the economy. 
Mr Liu's office has routinely made public many audit reports on government departments, major enterprises and large infrastructure projects since 1999, but widespread misconduct  by government officials and fraud and misuse of funds showed little sign of being  reined in.
'The reappearance of these problems has underlined defects in our [political] system, which can never be fixed through a single audit,' he said.
Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based political analyst, said he was disappointed with the postponement of the Olympics audit report and the work of Mr Liu's office. 
'Authorities should have taken into account  public interests and concerns over the Olympics spending and made public the budget as early as possible,' he said, adding that the audit report should first be presented to the  top legislature. 
Unlike his predecessor, Li Jinhua, Mr Liu had tried to avoid criticising government agencies directly and revealing flaws,  Professor Hu noted.
'The change again highlighted  the lack of independence at  the auditor's office, which was a member of the State Council,' he said.



Olympics spending still not inspected, audit chief says