More domestic brand cars for govt officials

• Source: Global Times
• [14:26 January 20 2011]
• Comments

"Commercial and private vehicles have taken 80 percent of the whole market, which means the governmental purchasing will suffer less loss," Zhao said.

A resource close to Peugeot, which is also on the list, told the Global Times that his company will not suffer as a result of the new regulations, since most of its cars are sold to individual consumers.

Since 2004, the central government has readjusted the official vehicle quotas of 95 central government organs, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Procurement Center of the Central People's Government (PCCG).

During that process, 721 vehicles were deemed excessive or extravagant and the total number of central government official vehicles fell by 30 percent, the center's figures showed.

Spending on central government vehicles fell 22.5 percent year on year in 2008, according to the PCCG.

It said in June that the central government departments have no current plans to buy BMW or Mercedes-Benz vehicles for official fleets to cut this year's official vehicle expenses of government organs and the Communist Party of China (CPC) by 15 percent from the previous three years' average as part of its austerity drive, according to Xinhua.

Liang Chen contributed to this story