Gov’t to raise road maintenance fund by June
By Anh Quan - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – The Prime Minister has issued a decree regulating operation of the road maintenance fund that will take effect on June 1.
A source from the Ministry of Finance said vehicles are subject to road maintenance fund contribution including automobiles, motorbikes and lorries attached to such vehicles.
The road maintenance fund will be managed at both central and local levels, with 65% of automobile fees paid to the central coffer while the remainder will go to local budget. As for motorcycle fee collection, each locality will manage the fund on its own.
The central fund will be spent on national highway maintenance while local fund will be used for upgrading roads in the locality.
Any agency in charge of managing the road maintenance fund must prepare balance sheets every year and the results will be audited by state-run agencies.
Automobile fees will be collected by registration agencies while motorcycle fee will be collected by insurance companies, Nguyen Van Cong, spokesman of the Ministry of Transport, told the Daily.
The monthly automobile fee is divided into seven levels ranging from VND180,000 to VND1.44 million. Car owners can pay fee per month or per quarter.
As for motorcycle, the annual fee ranges between VND80,000 and VND150,000 a month.
It is calculated that fee collection contributed to road maintenance fund will total VND6 trillion per year, according to the Ministry of Transport.
So far, local individual vehicle users and transporters are paying a mountain of fees such as traffic fee, national highway and expressway toll fees and road maintenance fund. And another kind of fee is likely to be collected on circulating vehicles in the coming time.