Cut off public cars to take department heads and division heads to meetings

Directors, Division Directors,... of a series of General Departments of the Ministry of Finance will not be allowed to use official vehicles when traveling on business or attending meetings, and must provide their own transportation.

The Minister of Finance has just issued a decision regulating the budget for using public cars for business trips of General Departments, Departments (and equivalent units) in localities.

This decision on allocating public cars is applied at the General Department of Taxation, General Department of Customs, General Department of State Reserves, State Treasury, State Securities Commission, regulating the allocation of funds for using public cars when going on business trips (including meetings) in Hanoi city.

Accordingly, the positions of Deputy General Director and equivalent, Department (Department) Director, Deputy Department (Department) Director and equivalent will have to provide their own means of transportation for work trips, including meetings.

In addition, at the Department level (and equivalent units) headquartered in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the allocation of public vehicles applies when going on business trips (including meetings) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Official car at the General Department of Customs. Photo: L.Bang

Specifically, the Director, Deputy Director and equivalent of the Tax Department, State Treasury, Customs Department, and Regional State Reserve Department headquartered in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are subject to this public vehicle allocation.

For the Departments (and equivalent units) headquartered in the remaining provinces and cities (except Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), the budget allocation is applied when going on business trips in the cities and towns of the provinces and centrally-run cities where the Departments (and equivalent units) are headquartered.

Accordingly, the contracting subjects are the Director, Deputy Director and equivalent of the Tax Department, State Treasury, Customs Department, and Regional State Reserve Department in provinces and centrally-run cities (except Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City).

The fixed allowance for business trips is determined by the fixed unit price (13,000 VND/km) multiplied by the actual monthly business trip distance of each position.

This Decision of the Minister of Finance has taken effect since May 15, 2017.

The 2016 State Assets Report shows that, by the end of 2016, the Ministry of Finance owned the most public cars with 2,295 public cars. Of these, the General Department of Taxation alone owned 940 cars; the State Treasury owned 770 cars, the General Department of Customs owned 462 cars, and the rest belonged to other units under the Ministry. The number of public cars owned by the Ministry of Finance was many times greater than that of other ministries.

The representative of the Ministry of Finance said that the reason why this Ministry has the largest number of official cars is because it is a large-scale ministry, with the number of civil servants, public employees and workers many times larger than other ministries and sectors, just behind the army and the police. The number of workers at the Ministry of Finance is up to about 80,000 people. The General Department of Taxation alone has nearly 40,000 people, performing work at all levels.

In addition, some sectors such as tax and treasury require public vehicles to be mandatory in relation to transporting money.

Last October, the Ministry of Finance pioneered the allocation of public vehicles for Deputy Ministers and leaders with a position allowance coefficient of 1.25 (Directors General and equivalent) under the Ministry. The allocation of transportation costs from residence to workplace each day is determined based on the taxi fare multiplied by the number of working days in the month of the leaders, applied from October 1.

The person with the lowest fixed budget is 3.96 million VND/month, the highest is 9.9 million VND/month.

According to Vietnamnet.vn