By 2007, the office will strive to open all auditing reports and investigation reports to the public except for those concerning State secrets, business secrets and other contents unsuitable for publishing, according to the office's five-year working plan which was released on Friday.

It marks a big step forward in making the nation's government more transparent. Previously, almost all auditing reports have been kept secret and NAO only reported to the State Council and the National People's Congress (NPC).

However, NAO has been calling for reform for the past few years and in some cases, abstracts of auditing reports have been published.

The latest bold move was on June 25 when Auditor-in-Chief Li Jinhua reported to the NPC Standing Committee the auditing results of the 2002 State budget.

NAO's website published the full text of the report, which sharply criticized the activities of the Ministry of Finance, State banks, large State enterprises and some other ministries. Later, the information was released by the official Xinhua News Agency and published by numerous media outlets.

It was the first time that the full text of an auditing report was released, arousing huge interest from the public.

The office has promised to standardize contents, procedures and forms of the reports to be published in the coming five years.

NAO also vowed to tighten its auditing methods on the use of fiscal funds, State financial institutions and large State firms.

Under the plan, national auditors will pay more attention to checking the efficient use of State assets to discover losses of State assets due to poor management and flawed judgment.

In the past, most energy was devoted to checking the authenticity and legitimization of income and expenditure of State finance, banks and enterprises.

(China Daily July 5, 2003)