A political advisor on Monday urged the government to take strong measures to control administrative costs, saying promulgation of a law against extravagance and waste may help check the waste of public resources.

Feng Pei'en, a member of China's top advisory body, was worried about the drastic increase of administrative expenditure in the country.

The annual administrative expenditure per capita surged by 24 times from 1986 to 2005, and the growth rate is higher than that of the country's GDP per capita and fiscal income of the same period, according to Feng.

Feng made the remarks at a plenary meeting of the ongoing annual full session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.

Feng blamed the surge of administrative costs for widespread lavishment of public servants, from buying luxury cars and construction of luxury office buildings.

"Strong measures must be taken to bring administrative costs under control to realize the goal to build a conservation-minded government," said the CPPCC member.

To stop the unhealthy practices, Feng suggested an act on government information disclosure be delivered so that taxpayers can oversee government expenditure.

The promulgation of a law against extravagance would also help the general public to be aware of the "crime of wasting public resources" while establishing norms for the punishment of those who are proved to have wasted public resources, he said.

Feng's remarks go in line with what the government is determined to do in the future.

In his report on the government work to parliament a week ago, Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to "deal with the serious problem of extravagance and waste in some government bodies."

"Quite a few local governments, government offices and organizations compete with one another for lavishness and spend money hand over foot, which arouses strong public resentment," Wen said.

To handle the issues, China will strictly control the construction and expansion of government office buildings and absolutely stop the construction of more luxury government building projects, the premier said.

"Our objective is to build a just, transparent, hardworking, efficient, honest, upright and clean government that follows a well-defined code of conduct, government with which the people are satisfied," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2007)