HCMC – Shortly after the Ministry of Transport issued a new circular extending the roadworthiness certificates of private-use cars of up to nine seats for six months, Vietnam Register has made a clarification, saying only vehicles whose inspection certificates expire before July 1, 2024 will enjoy the automatic extension.

The Ministry of Transport just released Circular 08/2023, with effect from June 3, which revises and supplements some provisions of its Circular 16/2021 on vehicle safety inspection and environmental protection.

The new circular states that vehicles of up to nine seats that are not used for transport service can continue to run on the road for six more months if their roadworthiness certificates were issued before March 22, 2023. These certificates are now valid for one year and a half, so the new regulation extends the validity to two years.

This means more than 1.9 million cars of up to nine seats are eligible for the extension.

But according to Vietnam Register, only vehicles whose roadworthiness certificates expire before July 1, 2024 can benefit from the automatic roadworthiness certificate extension. This means cars whose roadworthiness certificates that expire from the above date onwards cannot enjoy the automatic extension.

Therefore, the number of cars eligible for the automatic roadworthiness certificate extension is around 1.4 million only.

The extension, according to Vietnam Register, will help reduce the huge backlogs of motor vehicles which the inspection centers in the country have coped with since the police filed bribery charges against hundreds of leaders and inspectors at multiple vehicle inspection centers nationwide.

Data from Vietnam Register showed that the country has a total of 281 automobile inspection centers but by early April, 46 had remained shut due to violations of vehicle inspection regulations, piling pressure on the operational centers.