Government car tally questioned
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A member of a law firm who called for more transparency of information on government cars has expressed her dissatisfaction with figures issued by Beijing government agencies.
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Finance released a short statement on its official website Thursday, stating that municipal government departments and government-funded agencies had 62,026 cars by the end of 2010.
"It's progress, but the abstract figure didn't give details such as the types of cars, which departments the cars belong to, or how they were used," Ye Xiaojing, an assistant with the Beijing Tianwen law firm, told the Global Times Tuesday. "Public supervision over the use of government cars is still a long way off."
Ye began asking for the books on government cars to be opened in December last year, after the Beijing municipal government issued new policies limiting the number of license plates that could be issued and ordered a moratorium on the purchase of cars by municipal government departments for the next five years.
The finance bureau collects the data for the previous year from government departments and reports it to the Ministry of Finance between March and April. However, the data only takes legal effect after being approved by the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress in July, the Beijing News reported Sunday.
"Beijing's measures to ease traffic congestion have drawn public attention to government cars," Meng Jingwei, a spokesman for the finance bureau, told the newspaper.
He said that figures on government cars would be released in July annually in the future.
Ye Qing, deputy director of the Hubei Provincial Bureau of Statistics, praised Beijing for being the first city in China to release data on government cars.
However, he told the Beijing News that the number did not include vehicles belonging to agencies partially funded by the government or State-owned enterprises, which would add a further 30,000 cars to the tally.
A report broadcast on China Central Television (CCTV) Monday added more confusion to the issue when it claimed that the number of government cars in Beijing was actually over 700,000.
"I don't know the source for the 700,000 cars, but it must be inaccurate. The current number is the true one, although it's a little far from the public estimate," said Meng.
The figure quoted in the CCTV report is thought to include cars belonging to central government departments, all of which are based in Beijing.
"The finance bureau would only release figures on municipal-level government cars, and not include State-level government cars," an official with the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau told the Global Times.
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