Vietnam to control car imports through raising registration fee

The volume of imported cars continued slumping under the pressure of widened trade deficit.

Till the end of April, 10,956 cars amounting to around $190 million were imported to Vietnam, including 7,000 below 9-seat cars worth over $84 million, reported general Department of Customs.

Earlier, the authorities had estimated that the car import into Vietnamese market in Jan-April could be 12,592 units, up 2.1 percent year-on-year. However, because of the solutions on controlling trade deficit and credit tightening-up policy, car imports are facing more difficulties.

An owner of a car import company in Hanoi said that it is very hard to manage capital for car import at this time. Credit institutions refused to lend loans for car import while consumers were not even considering in purchasing cars. "Those companies with long-term capital shortage will be difficult to exist in this time. During the past two months, I did not import any car", he stressed.

He said that Ministry of Industry and Trade listed car products into the limited import items. So foreign made cars will suffer not only import price in line with the list of import items subject to risk limitation but also the strict supervision. Car importers will have to pay import tariff just at seaports.

Imported cars are disallowed to be kept at warehouses of seaports and the loading fee also was raised by $125 per container. All aforementioned reasons showed that foreign made cars will be difficult to enter Vietnam in at least one quarter.

Businesses said that the to-be increased registration fee will continue beating the car importers with high stockpile volume.

Higher registration fee means higher car selling price whereas businesses do not dare to hike selling prices for a fear of losing customers. At present, car traders only wish to pay bank debts and sell out all stockpiled cars, said a HCM City based car trading company.

General Department of Customers recently proposed Ministry of Finance to release a series of measures to control import of goods such as car, automobile component, motorbike, mobile phone, and foodstuff and apparel materials.