New Regulation Causes No Difficulty for Car Dealers

To limit imports and improve road-transportation safety, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has issued Circular No. 20 containing some new procedures for passenger cars less than 9 seats. Circular 20 is put into effect on June 26, 2011. Since Circular 20 was made public, many car importers have proposed to the Government that this Circular goes against the principles of the WTO and could make them go bankrupt. Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thanh Bien talked with reporter Huong Ly regarding the issue.

 

In recent years, imports of cars in general, including vehicles of nine seats or less have increased relatively. In the first five months, imports of cars below 9 seats increased 56 percent in number and 72 percent in value. This proves that imported cars are more valuable than before. The measure that we apply is to issue Circular 20 in order to ensure a healthy market, ensuring the interests of car users, as well as the requirements on safety and quality.

 

Safety requirements when importing cars are essential because many vehicles imported into Vietnam's market but not ensured about the quality and technical criteria, the maintenance service is not guaranteed. In 2010 the situation was that some of the imported cars have problems such as sudden acceleration, the error in the throttle, causing hazard to users. When the faulty vehicle imported into Vietnam, the manufacturer refused responsibility to maintain, importers are not eligible to fix the problem.

 

Up to this moment, I have not received any documents from car dealers or associations concerning this Circular, if there is any feedback, we will be ready to answer.

 

Related to contracts signed before May 12 (time of issuance of the circular), we are currently working with the importers, if there is evidence to verify the business conducted importing and signing the shipment or the goods are on the way to Vietnam before the time the Circular 20 is effective on June 26, we will cooperate with the authorities to take remedial measures in accordance with the old legislation.

 

I think car traders should respect the provisions of the State as well as the interests of consumers. The condition of the provisions of Circular 20 is only the minimum requirement and should be done seriously. The State does not encourage the sale of goods of unknown origin; no warranty maintenance; the safety regulations on cars have been mentioned in Article 21, Law on consumer protection.

 

As far as I know, there are about 1,700 car traders to import non-official cars, importing 30,000 vehicles per year, so every year, each imports less than 20 cars, this shows that car market is too fragmented. Small auto traders do not contribute to increase revenues, production support and is purely commercial retail.

 

The import market is fragmented, small, and thus the refinement, reducing the clue is correct, in order to proceed the car market to have a major importer, distributor of genuine, assured quality and logistics maintenance service.

 

According to the content of Circular 20, from June 26, 2011, the import of passenger vehicles of nine seats or less must add some papers to the authorized State agency to complete the procedures. These include paper or attorney appointed by the importer; the distributor of the maker or dealer of the contract manufacturers that have been legalized by overseas representative of Vietnam under the provisions of law and the warranty certificate, maintenance qualified by the Ministry of Transportation. The above papers’ copy if submitted by the business submits must be certified and sealed

What do you think of several ideas that Circular 20 is contrary to the WTO agreement?

I would affirm the view of the Ministry of Industry and Trade when issuing this Circular is not about trade restrictions, not taken to control the quantity and the quantity as well as other provisions that are contrary to the requirements of the WTO. The traceability of goods for imports is required in not only Vietnam but also the big countries set very strict requirements for goods imported from Vietnam such as the agricultural products, fruit exports.

 

Procedures guide for businesses from now until the implementation of the Circular on June 26 is more than a month. We coordinate with the Ministry of foreign affairs to have guidelines for the foreign representatives, the procedures for consular legalization, even for procedures applied to designation or authorization of the distributors, manufacturers to guide the enterprises.