Where there is no road maintenance fee... it must be compensated with budget money!

Affirming the viewpoint of not stopping the collection of road maintenance fees, the General Department of Roads said that for localities that have not yet implemented the collection, such as Ho Chi Minh City, if they do not collect additional fees, they will have to use the budget to compensate.

There are still many shortcomings and unfairness in collecting road maintenance fees. Illustrative photo

Although not really effective as expected, Hanoi and many other provinces have implemented road maintenance fee collection since this policy took effect. However, there are also many localities, typically Ho Chi Minh City, that have not implemented fee collection for nearly 2 years.

The fact that some localities collect maintenance fees and others do not has led to injustice for vehicle owners between provinces and cities. Injustice even occurs within each locality, such as Hanoi, when there is a situation where some places pay fees and others do not.

According to the reporter's records, in some central districts of Hanoi, the number of vehicle owners complying with road maintenance fees is higher than in districts and counties far from the center. Although there are continuous documents urging localities to implement, the results of road maintenance fee collection in Hanoi are still very low, even in some localities, the fee collection is only zero.

In 2013, Hanoi only collected over 55 billion VND for about 1.2 million motorbikes, a figure that is too low compared to the number of motorbikes currently registered in Hanoi, with over 3 million. That is not to mention the thousands of motorbikes registered outside the province that are in circulation. In 2014, while the target was 320 billion VND, in the first 8 months of the year, Hanoi only collected a mere 11 billion VND in maintenance fees.

The reason for the situation where some places collect fees and others do not is because there is no penalty, leading to procrastination. Many people do not want to pay because they know that other places do not collect fees. “While we strictly comply with the regulations on paying fees, many other vehicle owners do not pay. That is unfair, so should we stop collecting fees? If we stop, do we have to return the money to those who have paid the fees?” – Ms. Huyen (Hoang Mai, Hanoi) asked.

"Road maintenance fees are not feasible after more than a year of implementation. It doesn't matter if households don't pay, but those who pay will not pay again. Collecting fees on each vehicle is also unfair, because some people travel a lot, but others travel very little. And the collectors themselves also have a hard time, knocking on doors day and night, but the efficiency is very low. It is necessary to study carefully to make the fee collection more feasible and more popular," Mr. Nguyen Phuc Y (Cau Den ward, Hai Ba Trung district, Hanoi) suggested.

For Ho Chi Minh City, after nearly 2 years of not implementing road maintenance fee collection, the city has recently started to discuss the collection of fees, but has not yet been able to "finalize" whether to implement the collection in 2015 or not! This has created unfairness among provinces, cities, and localities and is also something that needs to be recalculated appropriately.

Talking to reporters about this issue, Director General of the Vietnam Road Administration Nguyen Van Huyen said that the consistent policy is not to stop collecting road maintenance fees for cars and motorbikes. Once participating in traffic, vehicle owners must have the obligation to pay fees, contributing to supporting the state when the budget is facing many difficulties. To ensure fairness for vehicle owners, Mr. Huyen said that in the future, there will be a specific administrative penalty mechanism.

Regarding the case of Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. Huyen said that it is the city's right. The locality has the right not to collect additional taxes, but will have to use budget money to make up for those revenue shortfalls.

"Maybe Ho Chi Minh City has a large budget so they applied that plan. In the future, the General Fund will have to issue a document urging localities to collect maintenance fees," said Mr. Huyen. He also said that at the upcoming meeting, the Fund Council will have to discuss and propose solutions to overcome the procrastination of vehicle owners, to ensure fairness in paying road maintenance fees.

According to Infonet