Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad says there is currently no vehicle management system in place for the whole of government given that the existing vehicles management system by ITC has not been used since 2018 while Opposition MP Vijay Nath says entities like WAF and EFL already have this in place.
Professor Prasad says currently there is no online database and no vehicle software to manage both leased and state-owned vehicles.
He stated this during the Committee of Supply session in parliament for the 2025/2026 National Budget while replying to Opposition MP, Jone Usamate who asked why the funds for the vehicle management system had been reduced to $33,750 this year as it was around $50,000 last year querying if there are less vehicles to maintain or if this is for a software.
The Deputy Prime Minister says the reduction in the funds is aligned to the anticipated cost of software upgrade, and the anticipated cost is lower than what was budgeted last year.
He says this will allow the government fleet management team to manage all whole of government vehicles from entering vehicle information to run reports such as quarterly reports which are currently managed manually.
Nath objected saying state entities like Water Authority of Fiji and Energy Fiji Limited already had vehicle monitoring systems, but what Usamate was referring to is that there was already money set aside in last year’s budget as well.
