Feature: Gov't vehicle auction leaves Italians skeptical

Government cars auctions launched by the Italian government to slash public spending has caught the attention of Italians who, however, are skeptical about the move's results.

The Italian government has said it has raised nearly 900,000 euros (988,000 U.S. dollars) from the auctioning of 107 official cars at a total of 151 put up for auction so far.

"But the real question is how much these official cars have cost citizens," Corrado Signorelli told Xinhua while doing some shopping with his wife near Milan.

"They might have cost 20 times more. Of course 900,000 euros is better than nothing, but in the end the issue is they were sold below their worth. Actually I believe the auctioning is a farce," he pointed out.

The auctioned cars included Alfa Romeo, BMW, Fiat, Lancia, Audi of which a few are armored Subaru and Jaguar used by the interior, defense and justice ministries.

Government sources told Xinhua at the end of last week that more auctions of official vehicles are expected to take place in the future, though the period has not been established yet.

"The intention is good to deliver a message of sobriety to citizens who are poorer and poorer in Italy, contrarily to politicians, but certainly it is a very small initiative," an elderly woman, Mariangela Pesenti, told Xinhua.

"Why don't they cut their salaries instead or sell the villas that they do not use? This would be much more effective," her friend Sabrina Dalle Mulle pointed out.

The auctioning was introduced in March 2014 by the center-left government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi as part of reform measures to cut public spending which in Italy amounts to more than 800 billion euros (878 billion U.S. dollars) every year.

According to latest official figures, the numbers of governmetn issue cars fell to 53,860 in November 2014 from 56,878 in January of the same year.

More than 1.5 million users were reported to have visited the government's eBay store and a few cars have been also sold abroad. The money raised through the auctions went to a fund for the reduction of Italian deficit, the government said.

But Il Fatto Quotidiano, a national newspaper well-known for its investigative reporting, said the effort was frustrated by the government's plan to purchase in the same period of 1,276 new cars worth tens millions of euros.

The newspaper underlined how the issue of official cars remains very difficult to address in Italy due to intricate bureaucracy and lack of control which allow local administrations to do whatever they like.

Thus, despite the government's commitment to limit the number of official cars to five for every ministry or state office with more than 600 employees, official cars continue to heavily weigh on public spending. In fact Italy counts the largest number of official cars in Europe, according to weekly l'Espresso.

"If they sell a few official cars online, that is ok for me. But what I would like to know is where the proceeds of the auctioning are going, as I do not even believe they will be used for the right purposes," another citizen, Paolo Russi, told Xinhua. Endit