Proposal to make ETC tagging mandatory during vehicle inspection.

Specifically, the Ministry of Transport has recently sent a document to the Vehicle Registration Department regarding the increased use of identification tags for participation in the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) service.

This proposal suggests that the Department of Vehicle Registration take the lead and coordinate with relevant units to propose amendments and additions to legal regulations to make the affixing of ETC identification tags a mandatory procedure in the vehicle registration process for road motor vehicles.

The Vehicle Registration Department is required to submit a report on the above matter to the Ministry of Transport before August 30th.

The Ministry of Transport wants to make ETC tagging a mandatory procedure during vehicle registration and inspection. (Illustrative image)

This request was made to implement the Prime Minister's directive in Circular 11 dated July 19th on accelerating the process of attaching identification tags to automobiles for use in electronic toll collection services.

Previously, starting from August 1st, 10 expressways began implementing automated toll collection along their entire routes, eliminating mixed-use lanes. BOT toll stations on national highways will now only have one mixed-use toll lane.

Car owners will be fined 1-2 million VND if they enter the non-stop lane without using the ETC service.

According to Mr. Bui Trinh, General Director of Vietnam Digital Transport Corporation (VDTC), as of the end of July, the company had affixed more than 1.6 million ePass cards to its vehicles.

At the same time, VETC also reported that it had affixed electronic toll collection (ETC) tags to approximately 2 million vehicles. Both companies recorded 35,000 cases of vehicles having two ETC tags affixed simultaneously.

Thus, by the end of the period when the policy of free ETC tag installation was in effect, approximately 3.6 million vehicles nationwide had already had the tags installed.