City cuts back on official vehicles

Shanghai cut its fleet of government vehicles by 19.6 percent in 2012 to roughly 6,500 as the city continues to take measures to reduce how much it spends on government cars, a local official said Sunday at this year's Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

It was the first time the city government has disclosed detailed figures about official vehicles. "We have required all district-level departments to reduce the number of public vehicles and consolidate their uses, so that each department in 16 districts only has two or three vehicles for use in emergencies, said Xue Xiaofeng, the head of the Shanghai Government Offices Administration, who also serves as a CPPCC member.

However, some departments, such as the police, should be allowed to have more vehicles because of their special responsibility to the public, Xue added.

According to a previous government report, Shanghai had about 8,000 government cars in 2011. By comparison, Beijing had 62,026 government vehicles in its fleet, the Beijing Municipal Finance Bureau disclosed in April 2011.

The city's government has also applied standard government procurement procedures to the purchase of new vehicles by putting them up for bid, along with maintenance, refueling and insurance on all vehicles, Xue said.

The government will also change what kinds of vehicles it purchases. "We will favor domestic brands and vehicles with energy saving technologies," Xue told the Global Times.

However, Xue said they didn't have a plan to reduce the number of cars to help lower the severe pollution that Shanghai has recently experienced.

The municipal government reported earlier this month that government vehicles in the city have been cited for traffic violations 193 times from July to October 2012.

The General Office of the Shanghai Municipal Government urged city officials to consider the violations as a warning. The report was part of a broader effort to improve how city departments manage their government vehicles.