LookAtVietnam – Holders of driving licences will have to renew them by June next year to receive new cards, a Ministry of Transport official has said.

Holders of driving licences will have to renew them by June next year to receive new cards.

The main reason for the change to the licence card was to integrate driving licence requirements among ASEAN countries and nations in the Mekong sub-region, deputy head of the Road Development Nguyen Van Quyet told Nguoi Lao Dong (The Labourer) newspaper.

There are 26 million driving licence holders in Viet Nam with more than 20 million of them for motorbikes.

Quyen said the use of English on the licence would help make the licences more widely recognisable in other countries.

He said the current licence card format that had been in use since 1996 was not resistant to heat and moisture and was too big for most wallets and purses.

The simple technology used to produce the existing licences made them easy to be modified or forged, he said.

Quyen said holders of licences that have a time limit, such as those of classes B, C, D, E, F would be required to apply for the new card first.

It would be harder to renew all motorbike licences at once, because there were so many, he said, adding that the Ministry would investigate how it should be done.

Quyen said the fee for renewing a driving licence would be more than VND30,000 each, because of more expensive materials and technology. The total cost would be about VND800 billion (US$43.4 million), he estimated.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News