Regional Development Minister Gabrijel Žalac’s mother is not the only wife driving a rent-a-car. Certain parliamentary and government officials will be driven in them for at least the next two months. The tax-payers will pay for this a monthly amount of 73,500 kuna with VAT included, i.e. 147,000 kuna, for the total of 14 rented vehicles. Out of this, the total monthly cost for the Parliament is 38,750 kuna per month, while the Office for General Affairs of the Parliament and Government (UZOP) will pay 35,000 kuna, reports 24sata.hr on April 8, 2019.
A five-year operational lease agreement for 20 cars purchased in 2014 expired in mid-March, so the UZOP had to return them to the leasing companies. The Central State Bureau for Public Procurement has concluded a framework agreement for the 18 new cars to be delivered. “But, in order to avoid the situation that we have no vehicles available, we have hired vehicles for the transportation of officials, civil servants and dignitaries," reported the UZOP.
For the purposes of transportation of deputy speakers of the Croatian Parliament, rent-a-car companies delivered to Parliament four Opel Insignias, as well as two Mercedes E Class vehicles to transport foreign delegations. A monthly rental of one Opel Insignia costs 5,000 kuna without VAT, or 6,250 kuna with the tax included. The rental of a Mercedes E Class on a monthly basis is 5,500 kuna without VAT or 6,875 kuna with the tax.
For the purposes of transportation of civil servants and other officials of parliament, government and government offices, eight 2014 Opel Insignia have also been rented. For each of them, the monthly rent without VAT amounts to 3,500 kuna.
“Since vehicles have been leased until the delivery of new vehicles, for a maximum of two months, there was no need to conduct a public procurement procedure. The parliament and the UZOP obtained them per the internal instructions on how to conduct a simple procurement procedure,” said the General Affairs Office.
This all means that someone has missed the deadlines for car purchase by two months. And that someone should be held responsible since the deadlines for announcing public procurement procedures have not been respected. If they had done all these things in a timely manner, there would have been no additional government spending, says a source.
Translated from 24sata.hr (reported by Snježana Krnetić).
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