The Ministry of Transport will work with relevant agencies to discuss the possibility of doing away with airport entry/exit fee collections from automobiles following a proposal of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), according to Tien Phong newspaper.

Noi Bai International Airport

CAAV general director Dinh Viet Thang has written to the Minister of Transport proposing abolishing the airport entry-exit fee imposed on cars as it is not provided in the Law on Civil Aviation of Vietnam and other relevant legal documents on aviation service prices.

Lai Xuan Thanh, board chairman of the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), the operator of airports nationwide and also the collector of the fee, said the collection of this fee is intended to recover construction, operation, upgrade and maintenance costs of roads leading to airport terminals, so it is suitable to the civil aviation and land laws and international rules.

ACV is using land allocated by the Government at no land use charge to build roads to terminals, so ACV collects the fee from cars coming to airports as a non-aviation service in line with the Civil Aviation Law.

The Government Inspectorate earlier conducted an investigation of ACV’s compliance and found that ACV had violated regulations on provision of non-aviation services.

Particularly, 21 out of 22 airports managed and operated by ACV illegally impose a fee of VND7,000 to VND30,000 on each car although these cars come to airports for less than five minutes. These airports collected VND551 billion between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2015.

According to the Government Inspectorate, ACV used fee-free land to build roads to airport terminals and collected a fee from road users, thus constituting an infringement of the Land Law.

The fee collection is beneficial to ACV and the Government but ACV violated the land and civil aviation laws and affected the interests of passengers who are required to pay the fee no matter whether they use traditional taxis or those of ride-hailing firms Uber and Grab, or private vehicles.

Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh then assigned the Ministry of Transport to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to take measures to deal with this illegitimate fee collection from cars and report results to the Prime Minister in March.

The fee has been collected since 2000 in accordance with the ACCV general director’s decision.

SGT