Slashing government cars

Very few government cars will be kept and government employees will choose whatever transport means available for official business. This is a stipulation in a document championing frugality that the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly released on Monday.

There has never been such a clear-cut specification to cut the money spent on government motor vehicles despite the fact that the waste of public funds and corruption associated with them have long been a focus of public grievances. The top authorities seem determined to solve the problem once and for all.

In 2011, more than 60 percent of the 9.36 billion yuan ($1.53 billion) that all the central government departments spent on public receptions, business trips and procurement and maintenance of vehicles was spent on buying and operating government vehicles. It has proved to be an enormous waste of public money for government departments at all levels to keep a huge fleet of motor vehicles along with a large number of drivers. In addition, corruption is involved in the use and maintenance of them.