The ministry’s proposal is aimed at mobilising capital from different sources to maintain and upgrade the road network to make it more convenient and reliable for road users.

However, it still has many drawbacks. First of all, collecting the fees would be troublesome and impractical. According to the proposal, car users will have to pay an extra VND1,000 on every litre of petrol they use. In fact, many people do not care how much they will have to pay. Moreover, with petrol prices fluctuating all the time, fixed fees would hardly keep pace with such fluctuations in the market. Petrol is used not only to run cars but also to serve agro-fishery producers and industry across the country.

Under the proposal, people who consume petrol in the non-transport sector will have their road maintenance fee refunded. But, this is not easy to do, as administrative procedures are cumbersome and costly. The current reimbursement of personal income tax should have taught the authorities a valuable lesson.

In addition, the VND1,000/litre fee level is unreasonable, given the fact that most of means of transport in Vietnam have light loads and do not cause much damage to the roads.

The current way of collecting fees for diesel-run vehicles has also produced a public outcry due to its complexity and costly procedures.  Accordingly, car owners have to purchase a device to calculate the fee, which is fixed on their vehicles. Being charged with VND800 per one kilometre, the owners have to pay an additional VND4-6 million a month for a car on average, excluding other kinds of fees. Eventually, transport costs will increase and consumers will lose out. On the other hand, the State will have to increase expenditure on personnel and equipment to manage the collection of fees.

Road maintenance fees are widely applied in developed countries as they have a complete road system and use modern technology to collect fees. In Vietnam, the transport infrastructure is underdeveloped and the fees are already high.