State agencies are still using public assets ineffectively and sometimes causing a big waste of resources, deputies said at the National Assembly session on Thursday.

The management board of President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was found to have rented their office on Dien Bien Phu Street, Hanoi from 1997-2007 to earn more than VND3.6 billion (US$201,600).

Ho Chi Minh City Customs office was also named in the report as renting its land illegally while Vietnam Television in Hue city had left the seventh, eighth, and ninth stories comprising 1,500 square meters of space unused in its office.

A Nissan car at the Da Nang Television in the central region had been left unused for the whole of last year while the Ministry of Transport did not keep records of two cars it was using, the report found.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment did not maintain proper records of its fixed assets, it said.

The report also showed that as of the end of 2008, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment still kept assets that it didn’t use or didn’t need worth VND24.9 billion. Similar assets with the Finance Ministry were valued at more than VND9.3 billion; with the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs at VND9.2 billion; with HCMC state agencies at VND11.7 billion; and with northern Hai Duong Province at VND83.2 billion.

Reported by Luu Quang Pho