Cabinet to Leave Chiefs without Official Cars

Baku / 01/18/19 / Turan: Hundreds of officials will transfer to cheap cars or personal vehicles as a result of a decree signed by the President. The Cabinet of Ministers has been instructed to prepare a list of positions in government departments and companies (including public law), which necessarily need official vehicles.

Within a month, a new list will be defined, and managers who will be out of the list will switch to public or personal transport. The service cars they use will be sold at auction.

The name of the decree, published in the state news agency AzerTag, explains the reason for the new list: "On measures to optimize and improve the management of a number of government agencies."

The public figure Osman Gunduz, who commented on this decree, reminds that several days earlier the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources purchased a Land Cruiser car for its management for 140,000 manat, and one of the state universities bought Toyota Avalon for 116,000 manat. One of the state organizations of public law has recently acquired several cars for 1.4 million manat.

"As you can see, such purchases have angered the highest authority... We can expect the sale of many comfortable cars in the next 2-3 months," says Gunduz.

Additionally, we will inform you that on January 14, 14 cars that were used in the Ministry of Internal Affairs were put up for auction. The maximum starting price was set for two BMWs of the third model of 2006 - 5,100 manat each.

On the website of car sales Turbo.az cars of the same year of production are offered for 15-25 thousand manat.

The Interior Ministry sells the 2007 Volkswagen Passat for 4,000 manat (starting price), and on the website the same cars are sold for 11-13 thousand manat.

However, the placement of their cars by the Ministry of Internal Affairs at an auction cannot be considered an "optimization", since the same department bought new cars of the prestigious model Mercedes for traffic police, refusing to use BMW.

The list of filling the new car shows that Mercedes for traffic police bought for a higher price than the previous BMW cars.

Russian colleagues of the Azerbaijani traffic police officers use locally-made cars in their work.

It is possible that the Cabinet of Ministers will oblige state agencies to acquire for official use new automobiles manufactured by the Neftchala plant, which assembles Khazar cars from Iranian parts. Launching this plant, it was announced about the annual production of 10 thousand cars, but over the 11 months of last year about 794 cars were assembled.

Without steady sales of Khazar, the Neftchala plant may go bankrupt, as happened with the assembly plants in Shamakhi and Nakhchivan.

In the Baku market, new cars Khazar are sold for 14-16 thousand manat, depending on the configuration. If the Cabinet of Ministers provides guaranteed demand, the Neftchala plant can produce Peugeot and Renault cars at a price of 18-20 thousand manat.

It should be noted that the campaign of forced transplantation of officials into non-prestigious locally produced cars started in previous years was blocked by the same government agencies that continued to purchase expensive imported cars at public expense. -0-