Motorcycle license plates auctioned will be from 5 million VND

The information is stated in Decree 156/2024 regulating the auction of vehicle license plates, effective from January 1, 2025. This is a decree detailing Articles 37 and 38 of the 2024 Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety on the auction of vehicle license plates.

The license plates put up for auction are license plates of cars, motorbikes, and mopeds that are made public for organizations and individuals to choose to register to participate in the auction. License plates not put up for auction will be transferred to the vehicle management system for registration according to regulations.

This will be the first time that motorbike license plates will be auctioned, while car license plates have been auctioned for over a year. Motorbikes are currently the main means of transportation for Vietnamese people with more than 65 million vehicles. Therefore, the Ministry of Public Security hopes that the auction of motorbike license plates will increase budget revenue and satisfy all the wishes of people using beautiful license plates.

When participating in the auction of motorbike license plates, the deposit will be equal to the starting price of a license plate put up for auction. The deposit will be deposited into a separate payment account of the property auction organization opened at a bank, from the date of listing to two days before the auction opening date. The step price (each time the price difference is paid) for motorbike license plates is 500,000 VND.

For car license plates, the decree maintains the current starting price of 40 million VND, with price steps of 5 million VND. However, from January 1, 2025, the starting price will increase once a year, each time increasing by 5 million VND.

The auction registration fee is 100,000 VND for a car license plate and 50,000 VND for a motorbike license plate.

Five-digit car license plate to be auctioned again after second time with starting price of 500 million VND

Article 6 of the decree states that the starting price for car license plates in the format AAAAA (A>4), ABCDE (A4) to be auctioned again after the second time is 500 million VND; for motorbikes it is 50 million VND.

Thus, according to the above regulations, car license plates with formats such as 55.555, 66.666, 88.888, 99.999.... (commonly called five-of-a-kind license plates) and license plates 56.789 (commonly called progressive series) will be auctioned for the third time at 500 million VND. The first and second auctions are still 40 million VND like other license plates.

According to the new decree, the Ministry of Public Security will sign a license plate auction service contract with an asset auction organization. For each successfully auctioned license plate, the auction service price paid to the organization is calculated at 8% of the starting price. This price does not include value added tax and auction costs.

The auction fee paid to the organization is 10,000 VND per car license plate put up for auction and 2,000 VND per motorbike license plate.

The person who "paid a deposit" to win the license plate was banned from bidding for 12 months.

Those who win the license plate and do not pay or do not pay enough money will be banned from participating in the auction for 12 months. This is the point of the new law compared to the resolution of the National Assembly in mid-2023, which is currently being applied. According to this resolution, auction winners who abandon the previous round's results can still register to bid in the next round.

According to the decree, within 30 days from the date of the announcement of the results, the auction winner must pay the entire auction amount after deducting the deposit. The auction winning amount does not include the vehicle registration fee. This is a new regulation when currently the auction winner only has 15 days to pay.

The Government assigned the Ministry of Public Security to open a specialized collection account at a bank or foreign bank branch to collect the auction winnings. In particular, before being paid into the state budget, expenses for auction activities will be paid. Specifically, the costs of organizing the auction, advertising, and managing the license plate auction management system. The amount collected from the license plate auction after deducting the expenses for auction activities will be paid entirely into the central budget.

After 5 auctions in more than a year under the National Assembly's pilot resolution, nearly 4,500 billion VND has been paid to the state budget after deducting the costs for the auctions.

Publicly announce the number of people registering to participate in the auction for each license plate

A new point in the decree that will be applied next year is that property auction organizations must publicly disclose the number of people registered to participate in the auction of each listed license plate.

In addition, before the auction, the Ministry of Public Security will transfer the list of license plates to be auctioned to the professional organization and publicly announce the plan on the Ministry of Public Security's Electronic Information Portal and the Traffic Police Department's Electronic Information Page.

The auction organization must then publicly announce the auction plan along with the list of license plates to be auctioned. The time for public announcement, posting of auction regulations, and list of license plates to be auctioned must be at least 30 days before the date of the auction.

The auction will be stopped when the Ministry of Public Security has grounds to believe that the organization or auctioneer has violated professional ethics or in an event of force majeure.

Bidders will be disqualified if they provide false information; use fake documents to register for the auction; collude with the auctioneer to lower prices, falsify results; threaten or coerce the auctioneer to give incorrect results.