Naza-Berjaya to be government’s new fleet vehicle supplier

KUALA LUMPUR: After a year-long bidding process with proposals from at least seven companies, the government has selected Naza-Berjaya as their new fleet vehicle supplier along with contracting them to maintain and manage police patrol vehicles. The current fleet management contract had expired in late 2018 which was with Spanco Sdn Bhd since 1994. Finance Ministry sent the letter of intent to the consortium, with the actual award to be announced in June this year.

As reported by The Star, KUB Malaysia Bhd’s former boss, Datuk Abdul Rahim Mohd Zin has been hired by the Naza-Berjaya consortium to lead, negotiate and conclude the project with the government. He left KUB “to pursue other interests” in December last year. The Star further, reported, “The new concession holder will only start supplying new cars to the government to replace out-of-lease Spanco vehicles once they have finalised the award.”

Currently, the government has a fleet size of around 12,500 cars, including the ones used by top civil servants, various ministers and other police patrol vehicles. Spanco leased these vehicles, mostly Proton cars, through a 5-year replacement cycle. Under this contract, the maintenance cost of all vehicles was capped at pre-defined limits. What this means is that even after the new concessionaire takes charge, Spanco would still continue to provide maintenance for its cars that are still in service.

It is said that Spanco replaced around 2,000 cars over the past 12 months according to the signed 5-year replacement contract. These include 500 Proton X70 that were delivered between December 2019 and January 2020. The Proton cars are, currently, in use by the public sector’s super scale officers.

While Spanco is an independent service provider with 220 staff members (approx) and more than 200 service centres across the country, Naza-Berjaya consortium, on the other hand, holds distributorship of 20 vehicle brands, including Peugeot, Mazda, and Kia. Aside from this, Naza has dealers under its stable that sell cars from brands like Mercedes-Benz.

It is likely that the government fleet would now be added with models like Kia Optima, Mazda CX-5 and the Kia Cerato.

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