Ho Chi Minh City authorities will begin collecting an annual road maintenance fee of up to VND150,000 (US$7) from motorbike owners as of January 1, 2015.

>> Ho Chi Minh City may collect annual road fees from motorcyclists early 2015 At its Tuesday meeting, the city People’s Council approved the People’s Committee’s proposal to impose the yearly road fee on motorbike owners in the city – the only locality in Vietnam that has yet to levy the fee on motorbike riders. Accordingly, owners of motorbikes with engines of up to 100 cubic centimeters (cc) will have to pay VND50,000 ($2.33) per annum, and those who own bikes with 100-175 cc engines will be liable for a higher rate, VND100,000 ($5.61) per year. As for bikes with engines of over 175 cc, the fee rate will be VND150,000 ($7) per year. No fee will be imposed on electric bicycles.

The people’s committees of wards, communes and towns are tasked with instructing motorbike owners to fill out fee declaration forms for motorbike use, according to the fee collection plan of the city Transport Department. Based on such declarations, local people’s committees will assign staffs  to collect the fees and grant fee receipts to owners at their home. Alternatively, motorbike owners can pay the fee directly at their local people’s committee. By late 2013, the number of motorbikes subject to the fee was more than 3 million, according to statistics from the city’s districts.

The total amount of fees to be collected may reach VND300 billion ($14.02 million) per year, the department said. The fee will be collected pursuant to Government Decree 18/2012 dated March 13, 2012 on the establishment, management, and use of the Road Maintenance Fund. Under the decree, users of motorized vehicles were supposed to pay a road maintenance fee, which was intended to feed the fund, from June 1, 2012, but the government later delayed the fee collection until January 1, 2013, given that people were facing difficulties in their daily lives due to the troubled economy. However, while all other localities have set out their own fee rates and collected the fees since 2013, Ho Chi Minh City has continued to postpone its fee collection to spare residents any further burdens.

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