Traffic Police Department proposes online auction of car license plates

The Prime Minister has just requested the Ministry of Public Security to urgently submit to the Government a plan to auction license plates before March 15.VnExpresshad an interview with Colonel Le Xuan Duc - Deputy Director of the Traffic Police Department, Ministry of Public Security, about this content.

- What is the current progress of the "Project to issue car license plates through auction"?

- This project is a policy of the Government and the Ministry of Public Security to contribute to administrative procedure reform. Since March 2017, after receiving the Prime Minister's direction, as the leading unit, the Ministry of Public Security has coordinated with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance, and the Government Office to develop a plan and roadmap for implementation.

We studied documents from other countries, held many meetings with the People's Committees of some localities and related ministries. After completing the fifth draft of the project, on January 12, the Ministry of Public Security submitted a report to the Prime Minister on this project.

-TIn the draft project, how are license plates divided into groups, taking into account good and bad plates, and how to distinguish?

- Through the survey, we found that owning a beautiful license plate is a real need for the people. However, depending on each person's concept, there are license plates that are considered beautiful to one person, but not beautiful to another. From a management perspective, we do not have the concept of a beautiful license plate, because license plates are simply born to serve the state management of security and order.

From this approach,We temporarily divide the license plates into 5 groups to auction. The first group is the license plates with 5 identical digits; the second group has the last 4 digits the same; the third group has 3 identical digits; the fourth group has the latter number being greater than the former number, and the fifth group includes any numbers that people want to choose, different from the above 4 groups.

-Will the license plate that the person bids on be attached to the car or attached to its owner?

- First of all, the auction of the right to use license plates must comply with the legal regulations and documents of the Ministry of Public Security on vehicle registration and management.

Car license plates are public assets, serving state management and the Government is responsible for exploiting the number warehouse for this purpose.At the same time, according to the regulations on vehicle registration, each license plate is only issued to one vehicle, so the owner of the vehicle that wins the auction will be able to use that license plate for his vehicle. When transferring ownership of the vehicle, if it is in the same locality, the owner of the vehicle can continue to use that license plate; but when moving to another locality, the transfer must be carried out according to regulations.

-The auction of license plates is said to help ensure transparency and avoid negative aspects in this field. So how will the auction take place, sir?

- We propose online auction to facilitate participation by all people anywhere. The only condition for participation is that people havean account, with valid means and records; the proceeds from the auction will be paid into the state budget.

To ensure fairness in the issuance of license plates through auction, all numbers put up for auction are publicly listed at the place of vehicle registration and on the online auction site.

Thus, people can rest assured about the process of auctioning license plates and the collected funds, ensuring transparency and supervision by relevant localities and ministries.

- How much revenue does the Ministry of Public Security estimate the auction will generate for the annual budget?

- This will be decided by the auction market. For example, through the pilot in Hai Phong, out of a total of 198 registered vehicles, only 97 vehicles participated in the auction; the remaining localities achieved 10% - 20%.In my opinion, the auction of license plates will certainly generate revenue for the state budget, but the specific number is difficult to estimate right away.

DraftThe project has a full legal basis, meets social needs and has the consensus of relevant parties.

If the project is approved, the Ministry of Finance and relevant agencies have also developed a plan to manage and use the collected money. The Ministry of Public Security has also developed a highly transparent online auction mechanism. I believe that when the project is put into practice, it will achieve the set goals and requirements.

The auction of license plates was proposed by the Traffic Police Department (Ministry of Public Security) in 1993. At that time, some localities such as Hai Phong organized license plate auctions. However, due to lack of consensus from public opinion, the Prime Minister requested to stop the implementation.

After that, Binh Thuan and Nghe An were the two localities that organized the auction of license plates, the amount of money collected was billions of VND to support the poor. However, due to the lack of many legal bases, these two provinces also temporarily stopped the above activities.