Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung talked to DTiNews about the ministry's policy to cut state-owned car budget and what civil servants think about the move.

Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung

The Ministry of Finance was the first agency to reduce its fleet of cars. What are you going to do next to revise policy and further limit budget spending?

We are classifying and re-arranging the current cars. The first solution is to continue providing VND5m-10m (USD223-447) subsidies to officials. The state won't buy new cars.

The second is to assign the cars to the whole unit instead of individual official or small agencies. For example provincial people's committees, councils and offices will share cars with each other. Or we can consider the situations and terrains to find another solution. Mountainous areas need different kind of cars than the delta regions.

How do your deputy ministers feel after they were given subsidies?

They are fine and follow the regulation. Some have even said that they felt even more comfortable because they won’t be in the public eye so much. Of course there are also some rotten apples that spoil the whole barrel and annoy the public.

When more officials are given subsidies, the number of idle drivers and cars will increase. How are you going to deal with this?

We have contracts with the drivers and regulations for everything. But I think we need to do it carefully as it relates to a lot of people and their jobs.

Leaders in many other countries rarely use state cars. The leaders in Germany and Singapore use their own cars to go to work. Will Vietnam follow them?

We'll do it step by step. Right now, we'll revise and complete the Decision 32 on purchasing and using state cars to reduce the fleet. Public supervision will help create pressure to perfect the policies.

When will the revision process complete?

We’re trying to revise the decision within a year to implement it quickly. I don't think this is a hard task. What we have to do is changing people's perception and gradually reducing the number of cars. I think we’re on the right path.