Comment on "Beijing to tally cost of government vehicles" (China Daily, April 7)

According to news reports, the Beijing financial bureau has said the municipal government has only about 62,000 official vehicles. It has said it does not know the exact number of overall official cars in Beijing because the other official vehicles belong to central government departments, the military, State-owned enterprises and other authorities.

But one media report has quoted a public administrative expert as having said that there are at least 1 million official vehicles in Beijing.

We may not know the exact number of official vehicles in Beijing, but it is huge according to our experience on roads. And these vehicles should take a large part of the blame for the terrible traffic jams in the city.

Therefore, to ease traffic problems, authorities at all levels should take measures to reduce the number of official vehicles.

It was, however, good to see the Beijing municipal government becoming the first to disclose the number of its official vehicles. It's a big step in disclosure of information, and we should ask it to release more information related to public finance.

Hu Liang, via e-mail

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(China Daily 04/13/2011 page9)