Parking fees short in Beijing

Report says unregulated collection companies may not be handing over money as required

Parking fee collection in Beijing is coming up short, according to a report in Beijing News on Monday.

Official figures for the annual parking fees collected for parking spaces on the roadsides in Beijing are only available for 2009 and 2010. Total fees collected for the two years were less than 60 million yuan ($9.6 million).

Based on the schedule of charges published by the municipal government, the total fees collected for the 40,000 roadside parking spaces in Beijing last year should exceed 300 million yuan, the report said.

Experts said better oversight is needed for companies that collect the fees to ensure that the money for parking in public spaces goes to public accounts rather than into private pockets.

An official with the Beijing Commission of Transport told the newspaper it was difficult for the government to collect parking fees from the collecting companies, but did not elaborate.

Less than half of all parking fees collected by the companies have been counted as government revenue in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and almost no such fees were collected by the government in Tianjin, Xinhua News Agency reported.

According to the Beijing News report, many parking fee collectors in Beijing operate outside of government regulations. Some "companies" run without certificates or with fake certificates. And some subcontract parking spaces to others. For both parties to make a profit, it would be necessary to increase fees and pass the cost along to car users.

Many subcontractors are not clear about how much money they should pay the transport authorities, and subcontractors pay even less than the amount transport authorities should charge contractors, according to the report.

The report cited a subcontractor named Xiang Hong, who subcontracted 79 parking spaces on a 1-kilometer-long road in Chaoyang district last year.

Xiang only paid 35,000 yuan a month to Ai, who rented the spaces from the local government, but Ai should have paid the government 35,500 yuan a month under the regulations, the report said. Ai promised lower prices if Xiang could pay a whole year's fee in advance, the report said.

"I think there is something fishy in the deal," Xiang told Beijing News, adding that she could not get an answer from Ai after repeated questioning about how much money he actually paid to the government.

Xiang said she in turn subcontracted the parking spaces on the road to one of her friends for 50,000 yuan, and the friend can make a profit of 25,000 yuan a month at that price, as the actual number of parking spaces on the road is more than 200 and all can be rented.

According to regulations, daily fees for a car to park along the roadside in most of Beijing's urban areas is either 15 yuan or 35 yuan, depending on the area, the website of Beijing Parking Management Co said. The company declined to comment when contacted by China Daily.

Wang Wenfang, an official with the Commission of Transport, said more than 10 departments are involved in some way with roadside parking in Beijing. Wang declined further comment.

Liu Fuli, an independent traffic expert in Beijing, said collection of parking fees in many places in Beijing is unregulated, causing problems such as frequent traffic congestion.

"I suspect there are interests exchanged between some companies and some officials," he said. "The relevant transport authorities should intensify their management of the issue to ensure that parking fees collected really go to the public."

Wang Limei, secretary-general of the China Road Transport Association, said Beijing should learn from some other major cities, such as Shenzhen, to reduce government interference in parking fee management.

"It is the market rather than the government that should set the fee for parking," she said.

Liu Yan, with the School of Government at Peking University, told Beijing News that the Beijing municipal government should select fee-collecting companies through a public bidding process and give the public certain powers to supervise them.