VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Transport has raised the
existing fees and set new kinds of fees, heaping logistics enterprises with big
difficulties.
Tran Huy Hien, Secretary General
of the Vietnam Logistics Association, said transportation fees account for
50-60 percent of the total expenses in logistics activities.
The car transport costs are
relatively high in comparison with other countries. Meanwhile, the road
transport system remains in poor conditions; therefore, businesses and people
have been burdened with fees and taxes.
“We have to pay some 15 kinds of
fees and taxes. At present, road transport means have to bear very high fees
when using the transport items developed by BOT projects (built, operation,
transfer). This kind of fee is expected to account for 20 percent of the total
goods transport costs.
Meanwhile, the vehicles have been
told that they would also have to pay the road use fee as well. Transport firms
said they cannot find any difference from the two kinds of fees.
Le Hieu Dang, former Deputy Chair
of the HCM City Fatherland Front, has also expressed his worry about the
decision to charge the road use fee.
Dang, who is a lawyer, said that
the fee increases by 1.5-3.5 times are too sharp, which would put a heavy
burden on people.
He stressed that such a sharp
increase proves to be unreasonable in the current context, when businesses and
workers all have to struggle to survive.
“This is really not a good
solution, which may kill enterprises’ production and make people’s lives more
miserable,” Dang said.
Mai Hoai Nam, Deputy General
Director of OOLC Vietnam, a logistics company, also thinks that it’s not the
right time to think of raising road tax. Most enterprises are now in big
difficulties because of the low demand. If the road taxes increase, enterprises
would have to stop doing business, while transport firms would have no jobs. If
so, the national economy would suffer heavily due to the production and
business stagnation.
According to the HCM City Cargo
Transport Association, the fees collected for BOT projects include the road
maintenance fee already. Therefore, if the State collects the road use fee from
every vehicle, vehicle owners would have to pay this kind of fee twice.
Bui Van Quan, Chair of the HCM
City Cargo Transport Association, said the association on December 3 sent a
petition to the government office, the Minister of Transport and Minister of
Finance, saying that the road use fee policy is not suitable to the current
conditions and that the fee collection, if applied as of January 1, 2013, as
planned, would put made the burden on logistics firms heavier.
It seems that the policy makers
do not have deep knowledge about vehicles. The legal document says the subjects
to the road use fee are tractors; trailers, semi-trailers pulled by cars or
tractors. As such, the owner of the complex of tractor and semi-trailer would
have to pay fee twice for the two parts. Meanwhile, there are the two parts of
a complex which are both needed to carry goods.
Meanwhile, it is unreasonable
that even unused vehicles (the vehicles seized by competence agencies for less
than 29 days, or the vehicles under the maintenance services) would still have
to pay fees.
This comes contrary to the fee
and charge ordinance which says that people don’t have to pay fees if they
don’t use services.
DNSG
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