Tax support
Discussing policies to support environmentally friendly vehicles through tax policies, Ms. Tran Thi Bich Ngoc - Head of Import and Export Tax Division, Department of Tax, Fee and Charge Policy Supervision and Management, Ministry of Finance - said that in the past and in the coming time, the State has always promoted and prioritized the development of fields that help reduce carbon emissions, including the development of environmentally friendly electric cars.
“This is an area that the Party and State pay great attention to and prioritize. The National Assembly and the Government have issued many policies on taxes, fees, and land rents to promote the development of investment in production and assembly as well as encourage environmentally friendly vehicles,” Ms. Ngoc emphasized.
Regarding import tax, the Ministry of Finance has chaired and submitted to the Government Decree No. 57/2020 to provide an incentive program for the entire automobile manufacturing and assembly industry. For electric car manufacturers and assemblers implementing this incentive program, the manufactured automobile components and assemblies are subject to an import tax rate of 0%.
This policy has been maintained and continued to be applied in Decree No. 26/2023/ND-CP. After 2027, the Ministry of Finance will continue to assess whether the policy is still appropriate or needs to be changed to submit to the Government to issue new appropriate policies.
Need credit for green transport development
Not only do we need government support policies through taxes, at the seminar "Green Transport Development: Challenges and Solutions to Attract Investment Resources" organized by the Ministry of Transport last August, many experts said that the Government needs more solutions to develop green transport such as government guarantees for green transport loans or issuing green bonds.
Mr. Do Le Ninh - representative of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) - said that ADB's goal is to disburse 100 billion USD from now until 2030 to deal with climate change and reduce carbon emissions. However, to access this source of capital, there must be two factors: bringing about a large development impact (such as converting to electric transport development) and secondly, being financially feasible.
“But in reality, how can we determine whether a project is green or not? Currently, there are many sources in the world that can confirm it, but they are not yet complete. There are still many controversial issues to determine,” Mr. Ninh shared.
To solve this problem, many experts believe that in the coming time, the Government needs to step in to guarantee green transport projects.
Mr. Do Le Ninh added that in fact, in countries in the region, such as Thailand, ADB has conducted 2-3 transactions, but up to now in Vietnam, there has only been one transaction with VinFast. That is the green loan project for electric vehicles. VinFast provides a climate finance package worth 135 million USD to support electric vehicle business activities, including the production of Vietnam's first all-electric public bus fleet and the production of a network of public charging stations.
The climate finance package includes a $20 million loan from ADB, an $87 million parallel loan facilitated by ADB as the authorized lead arranger, and $28 million in concessional financing.
At the same time, ADB also provides technical assistance under the One ADB Partnership and supports VinFast in the process of verifying green loans. Therefore, in the coming time, in addition to the efforts of enterprises, the state needs to participate more in international guarantees for green transport development loans. Only then will pioneering units have more resources to firmly step forward in green development.
