Strict management and use of state properties – Unit 1: Begin with state cars

Series of state cars without festival’s badge at Quang Trung temple (Vinh city, Nghe An) on 01 February 2017.

The management and use of state properties are hot issue attracting a lot of attention. Recently, in order to meet the requirements on cost savings and anti-extravagancy, the Government, the Ministry of Finance in particular has released many policies to tighten the purchase of state cars and many measures to prevent violations in this field.

Shortcomings occured

The Government has sent the members of National Assembly a latest report on state properties to be submitted to the third National Assembly Session term XIV, the total state cars until 31 December 2016 accounted for 37,286 units with total origin price of 23,986.30 billion vnd, accounting for 2.3% of the state property value. Number of state cars for senior officers occupied 860 units, equal to 2.31%; the number of state cars for general works accounted for 21,114 units, equal to 56.63% and total number of cars for speacialized purposes accounted for 15,312 units, equivalent to 41.06%. State authorities used 16,383 units, accounting for 43.94%, the busiess units used 16,026 units, accounting for 42.98%; management units used 4,567 units, accounting for 12.25% and project management boards used 310 units, accounting for 0.83%.

Mr. Tran Duc Thang, Director Public Property Management Department, Ministry of Finance, said that the permission of the State for leaders at a certain level to be entitled to use state cars is an incentive policy to create better conditions for serving general political tasks and ensure safety. However, after a long process of maintaining the policy of state car use, many problems in the management have arisen.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Fiance, each year the State buguet must pay 320 million vnd to operate a car including salary for driver, personal payment, business fee, accommodation for drivers for business trip; 90 million vnd for pertroleum, 70 million vnd for car depreciation and 60 minllion vnd for other fees. Thus, it was estimated that each year the State buget must pay about 12,800 billion vnd for 37,000 cars. Mr. Thang said that this expenditure does not suit with the difficult budget situation.

Moreover, violations of units in management and use of state cars reduced markedl, but it has still existed in the recent time. The most common situation was the use of state car for non-public works such as the case that a few weeks ago, a Head of Finance Division of Thach Thanh - Thanh Hoa district was criticized for using state car for praying. By the end of 2016, a series of cadres were also reporved for using state cars to join a wedding in Kien Giang. In the mid-2015, the public opinion was paying attention to a wedding in Buon Ma Thuot with six state cars and some cases where cadres used state car to small parties.

Another situation of which violations has not listed still took place was using state cars not in accordance with standards and mainly is that leaders at all levels asked drivers to take them from their houses to agencies without standards.

In addition, many authorities, localities and state owned enterprises bought car in excess of permitted price. The State audit pointed out this violation in a recent report. The report showed that some groups and corporations had bought and liquidated properties not in accordance with regulations. In particular, Construction Corporation No. 1 - parent company bought 21 new cars to support their departments and sectors; Phu Yen bough 3 cars worth 3 billion vnd etc. the purchase of cars in excess of standards also took place in some provinces such as Lao Cai and Tra Vinh

Attempt to reduce state cars

To resolve above situation, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 32/2015/QD-TTg stipulating the standards quota and regulation of use and management of cars at state agencies, public non-business units and single-member limited liability companies with 100% charter capital. Besides specific standards, quota, the Government also requested that agencies and units strictly handle reduandant cars after reviewing and arranging toward transferring cars for general works into cars for specialized purpose; and transfreing to units and agencies with the lack of car and redundant cars will be sold publically to get money to pay the State budget.

According to the Ministry of Financne, now 44 of 44 ministries and central agencies and 63 of 63 provinces completely reviewed and arranged cars in accordance with standard, quota and regime. After of more one year of execution, the number of cars reduced due to recovery, transfer, liquidation and destruction accounted for 2,085 units with the original value of 1,094.50 billion vnd. The central group reduced 549 units with total original value of 312.22 billion vnd; the local group reduced 1,536 units with total original value of 782.28 billion vnd

The representative of Public Property Management Department also shared: in the coming time, the Ministry of Finance will submit to the Prime Minister revised Decision 32 toward reducing from 30-50% of the total number of cars serving the common tasks equipped for ministries, sectors and localities by 2020.

Along with that, the revised draft law on state property management is being submitted by the Government to the National Assembly, which is expected to be issued by the end of 2017, the regulations on standards and quota of use of cars will also increased from the Prime Minister to the Government to enhance legal efficiency and practical enforcement.

In particular, an expected "turning-point" measure in the draft law is fixing the package fund for use of state cars for senior officers and cars for general works at State agencies. At that time, the state budget does not have to estimate to buy properties, reduce costs for gasoline, repair, maintenance, driver's salary, asset depreciation; and reduce drivers and car management; and individuals who are eligible for using state cars must actively use economically against wastefulness. Actually, the mechanism of car package stipulated in the Prime Minister’s decision is not compulsory, but it is optional, so the implementation is not effective. Through the reports of ministries, branches and localities, almost the mechanism of car package has not been implemented much. Meanwhile, the Governments of many countires are applying the tendency of not equipping cars but shifting to lease mechanism

According to the Ministry of Finance, the package fund is 20 million vnd /person/month, the costs for use of state cars for senior officers or branches and centers under Department will reduce by 80 million vnd/car/year. If the pakage fund is 15 million vnd/person/month, the costs will reduce 140 million vnd/car/year compared to 320 million vnd/car/month in the current time. It is estimated that the compulsory package fund is applied; the number of cars for senior officer will reduce nearly 700 units and the number of cars for general works will reduce maximum 10,000 units, thereby, the costs for these cars will reduce 3,400 billion vnd each year.

With above large savings, the legaliziation of management and use of State properties to be implemented is really necessary.