Ho Chi Minh City may collect annual road fees from motorcyclists early 2015

The city is now the only locality in Vietnam to have yet to levy the fee on motorbike riders.

The city People’s Committee has sent a proposal to the local People’s Council asking the latter to consider and approve the collection of such a fee from motorcyclists as of January 1, 2015.

The proposal is expected to be discussed at the 17th session of the People’s Council that is slated for December 30.

According to that plan, the fee will be collected pursuant to Government Decree 18/2012 dated March 13, 2012 on the establishment, management, and use of the Road Maintenance Fund.

Under the decree, users of motorized vehicles were supposed to pay a road maintenance fee, which was intended to feed the fund, from June 1, 2012, but the government later delayed the fee collection until January 1, 2013, given that people were facing difficulties in their daily lives due to the troubled economy then.

However, while all other localities have set out their own fee rates and collected the fees since 2013, Ho Chi Minh City has continued to postpone its fee collection to spare residents any further burdens.

In August this year, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport recommended the city administration to collect the fee from motorbike riders from January 1, 2015, with the highest annual rate amounting to VND150,000 ($7) per motorbike.

According to the department’s fee collection plan, riders of motorbikes with engines of up to 100 cubic centimeters (cc) will have to pay VND50,000 ($2.33) per annum and those riding bikes with 100-175 cc engines will be liable for a higher rate, VND120,000 ($5.61) per year.

As for bikes with engines of over 175 cc, the fee rate will be VND150,000 ($7) per year. No fee will be imposed on electric bicycles, according to the plan.

The people’s committees of wards, communes, and towns are tasked with instructing motorbike owners to fill out fee declaration forms for motorbike use, the plan says.

Based on such declarations, competent agencies will collect the fees and grant fee receipts to the payers, the department said in the plan.

In its proposal to the People’s Council, the People’s Committee suggested that the fee not be imposed on motorbikes of students from schools based in the city, of people in recognized poor families, of people who contributed to the Vietnamese revolutions and their relatives.

By late 2013, the number of motorbikes subject to the fee was more than 3 million, according to statistics from the city’s districts.

The total amount of fees to be collected may reach VND300 billion ($14.02 million) per year, the city’s transport department said.

Feedback

Regarding the above fee collection plan, Nguyen Huy Hoang, chairman of the People’s Committee of Ward 12, Go Vap District, told Tuoi Tre(Youth) newspaper that there should be more time for grassroots authorities to make preparations.

“The ward has yet to receive any instructions from competent agencies in relation to the fee collection. There should be more time for arranging staff and training them,” Hoang said.

Dr. Pham Xuan Mai, from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, said that the situation of motorbike use in the city is very complicated.

There are many cases in which the users of motorbikes are not their owners, or ownership transfer has yet to be made between bike buyers and sellers.

There are also instances in which vehicles have been registered in other localities but are being used in the city, Dr. Mai said.

“Under such circumstances, will the fees be collected from the owners or the users?” he asked.

There should have time for vehicle buyers and sellers to transfer ownership so the fee can be collected from vehicle owners, he suggested.

Meanwhile, Lam Thieu Quan, a member of the municipal People’s Council, said that if it is hardly feasible to execute the plan, the fee should not be collected.

Quan added that it would be better for the city not to collect the fee from motorbike riders or delay the collection until all necessary regulations, such as those stipulating the penalties on people who fail to pay the charge, are made available.

Fee revenue below target

Le Van Trung, director of the Department of Transport of the central city of Da Nang told Tuoi Tre on Thursday that the fee collection in the city in 2013 met only 19 percent of the set target.

Trung attributed the situation to many vehicle owners evading the fee while there are no regulations on sanctions for them.

Similarly, the fee revenues in many other localities last year were also lower – or even much lower – than their expectations, such as Binh Duong, Quang Binh, Can Tho and Hanoi, where their ratios of revenue to target were 80 percent, 50 percent, 45 percent and 20 percent, according to the Ho Chi Minh City transport department.