The plates would not be allowed to be traded or given away.  

The Ministry of Public Security has opened the National Assembly’s draft resolution on auctions for vehicle number plates under a pilot program for public opinion. 

The draft document has caught attention from people and experts. It includes new points that were never applied before. 

Some number plates with lucky numbers would be put up for online auctions. When the auctions are successful, the owners of vehicles would have the right to keep the number plates even when they sell the vehicles, and could use the same number plates for their other cars. 

As such, the number plates will belong to vehicle owners, not to the vehicles, as now applied. Even when the permanent residential addresses of number plate owners change, they won’t have to give the number plates back. 

A representative of the Ministry of Public Security said the number plates to be auctioned are car number plates with white background and black letters and numbers included the stock of unregistered number plates that the registration agency plans to grant each month, quarter, or every six months or year. 

The number plates will be granted to those who register to win auctions to be organized by provincial police. 

During the period of the pilot program on vehicle number plate auctions, the police will still maintain two management methods, including the granting of number plates at random and auctioning of number plates. Therefore, people will have more choices. 

Placing lucky vehicle number plates into auction is not a new issue, but it has been discussed for many years. Analysts say the auctions could bring trillions of dong to the state budget, and allow car owners to own the number plates they like.  

The idea of granting the right to choose number plates through auction was first raised in 1993 and again in 2020, when the Ministry of Public Security included the above proposal in a draft law on traffic order and safety, a law split from the Law on Road Traffic. However, the proposal was not approved. 

What does the public think? 

The demand for vehicle number plates with lucky numbers is real. Many cars see the value increase by many times thanks to their lucky number plates. 

On April 13, a KIA Sonet in Nghe An province got a lucky number plate of 999.99 and just one day later, the car, priced for VND600 million, was sold to a man from Hanoi for VND2.6 billion.

According to Bui Danh Lien, former chair of the Hanoi Transportation Association, letting people choose and auction car number plates is common around the world. 

At this time, the demand for lucky plate numbers is high but vehicles owners now are choosing plate numbers at random. The police might be reserving lucky number plates for their relatives or for those who pay money. 

“This is the source of wrongdoings in granting vehicle number plates. If number plates are put into auction, the wrongdoing will stop,” Lien said. 

Tu Sy Sua, a senior lecturer at the University of Transport and Communications, said that granting number plates through auctions is a reasonable policy which needs prompt implementation. 

However, Sua said the auction must be organized in an open and transparent way. 

“Lucky number plates need to be considered as limited resources, not a kind of good that can be traded,” Sua said. 

He believes that it is reasonable to set a regulation that number plates can be kept by buyers and the number plates must not be traded. 

The auction of number plates is implemented online, so, its success depends on technological platforms and signal transmission lines. Therefore, the auctions need to be organized by professional institutions with good capability.

The determination of starting prices is as follows:

Zone 1 (Hanoi, HCM City): the starting price = 2 times the highest vehicle registration fee applied in the localities (VND20 million now) 

Zone 2 (other localities): the starting price = 10 times the highest vehicle registration fee applied in the localities.

Hoang Hiep