Agencies and ministries in Vietnam have wasted huge amounts of public money on excessive numbers of new cars.

According to a report from the Public Assets Management under the Ministry of Finance, around 7,000 cars have been bought by various state agencies; including 176 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 57 by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 82 by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour; 73 by Quang Ninh Province alone and as well as from many other agencies.

The problem has been attributed to lax supervision of agencies and localities in defining standards for providing state-owned cars for their officials. Meanwhile, many agencies have continued to keep old cars after buying new ones.

The Ministry of Finance has sent a document to ministries, agencies and localities, asking for the transfer of redundant public-cars to those agencies that face shortages. Replacements of vehicles will only be permitted for cars of 15 years of use instead of 10 years as stipulated in the current regulation, or those which have covered at least 250,000 kilometres.

Only provincial sectaries and their deputies, and chairs of provincial people’s committees and councils are allowed to use public cars from home to their workplace.

Other high-ranking leaders, including heads of departments, except in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City will no longer be authorised to use the vehicles for such travel, according to the proposed decision.

Earlier, the government requested ministries, agencies and localities to submit their state-owned car reports by the end of the first quarter of this year; however, many agencies and localities have yet to file their reports.

Under the government’s instruction, within this month, any agency which does not send the report, will be notified and face a ban on buying new cars.

According to the Public Assets Management, there are already 40,000 state-owned cars are currently in use in the country.

Dtinews