Highway to feed highway

The policy of "using expressways to feed expressways" for expressways owned by the entire people and directly managed and operated by the State is gradually being concretized through legal documents, with the Ministry of Transport (MOT) having just submitted to the Prime Minister for consideration and approval of the Draft Decree on collecting fees for using expressways.

This is a legal document guiding the Road Law (effective from January 1, 2025) related to the field of highway toll collection, which the Government assigned the Ministry of Transport to preside over and develop according to a simplified procedure.

In the latest draft Decree submission, the Ministry of Transport said that it has completed the process of collecting opinions from affected agencies, organizations and individuals and the Ministry of Justice has organized a meeting of the Draft Appraisal Council.

It is known that the Draft Decree consists of 4 chapters, 13 articles and 1 appendix to stipulate the conditions and time for collecting highway usage fees; the regime of collection, payment, exemption, management and use of highway usage fees; and the level of highway usage fees under the management of the Ministry of Transport.

Currently, the expressway usage fee proposed by the Ministry of Transport is assessed to have met the Government's requirements of harmonizing the interests between the State and the people, and being suitable to the payment capacity of expressway users.

It should be added that the policy of collecting tolls on state-invested highways was studied and proposed by the Government and the Ministry of Transport to competent authorities for consideration and promulgation 3 to 4 years ago, when the eastern North-South expressway sections using public investment capital were still under construction. However, it was not until the National Assembly promulgated the Road Law that the policy of collecting tolls on expressways invested with state budget capital to create a source of funds for maintenance and reinvestment for expansion reached maturity, especially in terms of political and legal basis.

The process of investing, constructing and developing the expressway system in Vietnam, along with the experience of countries in the region and the world, shows that investing in developing the expressway system is an objective necessity, creating an important driving force in the socio-economic development of localities, regions and the whole country; helping to improve the country's competitiveness, ensuring national defense, security and hunger eradication and poverty reduction... However, investing in the expressway system requires huge investment costs for construction as well as management, operation and maintenance.

In the coming time, the demand for new investment capital for planned expressways is not small, while investment resources from the state budget are still limited. In addition, the annual capital for national highway maintenance currently only meets about 40% of the demand.

Therefore, the exploitation of state-owned highway infrastructure contributes significantly to the State having more resources to carry out maintenance work on existing highways, as well as to invest in new highway projects. At the same time, it contributes to improving the quality of traffic infrastructure, ensuring services commensurate with the fees on highways.

In addition, with the strong growth in quantity, diversity of vehicles and forms of transport as present, organizing toll collection on expressways will contribute to regulating traffic flow, reducing pressure on vehicle density, reducing the risk of traffic insecurity, increasing the life of works and reducing maintenance costs on expressways, as well as parallel roads.

It is also necessary to add that, at the time the Road Law comes into effect, the whole country will have about 15 expressways invested by the State with a total length of about 1,000 km put into operation. If a legal document on toll collection on expressways invested by the State is not issued in the next few months, it will certainly waste an important resource of the country.

Therefore, along with promoting the early promulgation of the decree on highway toll collection, the Ministry of Transport also needs to urgently prepare resources to build toll station infrastructure and quickly implement highway toll collection. In addition, the state management agency for traffic must soon develop a plan to inform, propagate and disseminate the contents and regulations of the decree, helping agencies, organizations and people understand and promptly grasp the legal regulations for implementation. Thereby, creating high consensus in society so that the policy of "using highways to nurture highways" can come into life, bringing about the expected results.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/lay-cao-toc-nuoi-cao-toc-d223032.html