Vietnam finance ministry drafts decree on environmental protection fees for emissions

Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance is drafting a decree on environmental protection fees for emissions towards achieving sustainable growth, improving environment quality and people’s health as well as reducing polluting projects.

The fees will be levied on units that cause emissions per the government’s Decree 08/2022.

The draft includes a fixed fee of VND3 million ($123.6) per year that can be paid in quarterly instalments. The variable cost is the product of the emission (cubic meters), the concentration of pollution (milligram per normal cubic meter), the fees for the four types of pollution (in VND per ton), and a constant of 10 to the power of minus nine.

The fees for pollution are set at VND800 ($0.033) per ton of dust, VND800 per ton of nitrous oxides, VND700 per ton of sulfur oxides and VND500 per ton of carbon monoxide.

The draft decree also provides incentives of lower fees for payers deploying technology to reduce their emissions. For those who succeed in lowering their emissions by 30% below the national standard, there will be a 25% reduction in the fees.

For emissions 30-50% lower than the standard, the fee will be halved. The fee will also be halved for public service units that recycle and process solid waste, industrial solid waste, medical waste and hazardous waste.

Vietnam now is home to 5.1 million cars, over 72 million motorbikes and 120,000 industrial facilities of which 138 are identified as serious polluters.

Currently, the country collects environmental protection fees for wastewater production under Decree 53/2020 and for minerals mining under Decree 27/2023.