Road maintenance fees for motorbikes may stop from January 2016

Faced with the ineffective collection of road maintenance fees for motorbikes, the Central Road Maintenance Fund Council has proposed that the Government stop collecting this type of fee from January 1, 2016.

According to the management agency of the Central Road Maintenance Fund, after more than 2 years of implementing the policy of collecting road use fees per vehicle for motorbikes, it is clear that the efficiency is very low. In 2013 and 2014, the revenue only reached about 21% of the plan. In 2015, the revenue in the first 6 months of the year decreased significantly compared to the same period and only reached 6.71% of the yearly plan.

The reason is that the collection organization at the commune and ward levels is not synchronous and unified, from the management of the number of motorbikes in the area to the organization of collection and payment to the budget.

People's Councils of major cities have proposed stopping collecting road maintenance fees from motorbikes. Photo: Ba Do

The sanctions for those who do not pay the fee according to the Circular of the Ministry of Finance are not feasible and difficult to control because the authority to impose penalties is not carried out by the police but by the tax authorities, inspectors of specialized departments, and People's Committees at all levels. Therefore, after the first year of paying the fee, many vehicle owners do not continue to pay the road use fee for the following years.

In addition, due to the lack of clear regulations on the responsibilities of organizations and individuals performing toll collection, this depends mainly on the self-awareness of the people. Besides, some localities collect fees, but some provinces and cities do not collect or stop collecting fees (such as Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Khanh Hoa...), creating unfairness and creating negative public opinion in society.

Based on the above assessments, although some localities still propose to continue collecting fees, the Central Road Maintenance Fund finds that the road usage fee collection for motorbikes is still very low, so it recommends that the Prime Minister allow a temporary suspension of road maintenance fee collection for motorbikes from January 1, 2016.

The fund also recommended that the Prime Minister assign the Ministry of Transport to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to study and amend Decree No. 18 in the direction of eliminating road use fees for motorbikes.

Referring to some opinions that the amount of fees that people have paid should be refunded, a leader of the Ministry of Transport said that whether or not to stop collecting fees depends on the Government's decision, but this policy of stopping toll collection was not part of the previous plan, so it has no retroactive value to the amount of fees that people have paid. Thus, according to the leader of the Ministry of Transport, people will not be refunded the amount of road maintenance fees paid for motorbikes.

According to VNE