Ho Chi Minh City to pilot paying travelling costs for officials instead of using State-owned cars

Thứ Năm, 03/05/2018, 09:18

PSNews - Ho Chi Minh Municipal People Committee is set to pilot paying travelling costs for officials, instead of state-owned cars, in a bid to reduce costs to the city’s State budget of its 5 lower-level agencies.

The piloted units include the Ho Chi Minh Municipal People Committee’s Office, Department of Finance, Food Safety Management Board, Binh Thanh and Binh Chanh District People’s Committees.

Accordingly, leaders of these units, who are transported by State-own cars (from their offices to other working places) under the current regulations, will now receive fixed budgets for their use of state-owned cars to perform their duties. Accordingly, each can receive a fixed monthly package of 19.8 million VND per month, or he/she will be paid for the real travelling distance at a price of 11,000 VND per kilometer.

Funds for the pilot program will be distracted from the city’s budget annually allocated to the units. After the pilot period, the Ho Chi Minh Municipal People Committee will consider and decide to apply the program to all lower-level units, and it is expected to start next year.

According to the Municipal People's Committee, this project aims to control the use of State-own cars and to reduce costs of vehicle management to each unit. The city will also check and then take back the redundant or unused cars.

Under the pilot, two cars will be arranged for each unit under a Government decision on the management and use of cars in State agencies and units. The agencies and units must sign monthly car rental contracts with the company.

During the pilot period, 26 cars will be available for use for five units. BESCO will also arrange 10 cars for 24-hour service to meet urgent needs on weekends, overtime or public holidays. The trips will be charged per journey or by kilometre. To reserve a vehicle, users will call a reservation centre or use the TNXP CAR phone app or computer via the internet.

The salaries of drivers, escorts and security forces will be approved by the city’s Department of Finance. HCM City has an excess of around 700 public cars, most of them old and damaged. Each year, the city pays a great deal of money to maintain and repair public cars.

Before the pilot began, each agency managed five to eight cars at a cost of about 15 million VND per car per month. But now each unit has only two cars, with a cost of 20 million VND per car per month. With the pilot, the city expects savings of more than 100 million VND per month, equivalent to over 1.2 billion VND each year.

Further savings will occur because of reduced spending on new car purchases. The city’s old vehicles will be revoked and proceeds from sales will be remitted to the State budget. Vietnam has about 34,241 public cars, each of which costs around 320 million VND, equivalent to 13 trillion VND (572.7 million USD) a year. The Government plans to reduce the number of public cars in the country to 30-50 percent by 2020, which is expected to save the State budget about 3.4 trillion VND (150 million USD) per year.

By Phung Nguyen