After the Transport Ministry held two press conferences on its two new proposed fees, a number of National Assembly deputies commented that Minister Dinh La Thang may be in confusion about the fees.

Transport ministry bows to criticism over vehicle fees


Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bui Thi An, a NA deputy in Hanoi, told Tuoi Tre that the minister was mistaken to say at one of the conferences that the new fees, when applied, will not overlap with other fees already imposed on road users.

Under a Government decree, a road maintenance fee will be collected from June 1, 2012 and this fee serves the same function and purpose as the two new proposed fees – one to be levied on personal vehicles and the other on cars that enter a city’s downtown during rush hour, she said.

All of these fees are intended to raise revenues for building and upgrading traffic infrastructure, ultimately to ensure a better and safer traffic environment, as said by the minister in the conference, An said. “Therefore, it is obvious that the two new fees, if approved, force road users to pay overlapping fees.”

As the names of the proposed fees suggest, they are only temporary solutions, which of course will fail to resolve the traffic problems in the long run, An said.

Instead, more fundamental solutions should be considered, such as comprehensive traffic planning and coordinated traffic infrastructure and public transport development.

“Presently, when the bus system, the only means of public transport, has been overloaded, if people are restricted from using their own vehicles, by what means can they travel around?” she said.

‘Confusion between fees and taxes’

Another NA deputy, historian Duong Trung Quoc, of Dong Nai province, told Tuoi Tre that he appreciated the efforts made by Minister Thang to improve the traffic situation that has reached what many NA deputies described as “an emergency state.”

However, Quoc said, any legal solutions to resolve current traffic problems must be fair and precise.

“Judging from the ministry’s proposal on the new fees, I think they have been confused between the two different concepts of fees and taxes” he said.

As defined in the Ordinance on Charges and Fees, a fee is a sum an individual or an organization must pay for services provided to them by other individuals or organizations.

Such payment is quantitative, which means how much service users have to pay depends on the volume of services they have used.

If I have several cars and I use only one of them every day, then it is not legitimate to levy fees on all the cars, including those I have not used, Quoc said.

For this reason, what has been proposed to levy on cars and motorbikes cannot be called “fees.”

Quoc also raised a question about why the ministry has not proposed levying a fee on State-owned cars.

Such a decision is necessary too, since it will help encourage State officials to take the lead in using the public transport system.

“Nothing patriotic about paying fees”

He also disagreed with Thang’s statement that “paying fees is an act of patriotism.” A fee is an amount payable by service users to service providers, and such a payment by no means can be regarded as “patriotic,” Quoc said.

It will be more accurate to say, “Paying taxes is an act of patriotism,” because when I buy a car, for example, I must pay a high tax and my tax payment will contribute to the country’s development.

“But since high taxes on cars are already meant to limit the use of personal vehicles, it is unreasonable to call the new fees on cars as ‘a fee to help limit the use personal vehicles,’” Quoc said.

Moreover, the ministry has proposed very high fee rates, VND10-50 million ($960-2,400) per car per year. It should have considered the country’s average income level when calculating such fees, he added.

Tuoitre