G/TBT/W/523  
 
23 April 2018  
(18-2513) Page: 1/2 
 Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade  Original: English  
 
VIET NAM — REGULATIONS ON CONDI TIONS FOR AUTOMOBILE S MANUFACTURING, 
ASSEMBLING, IMPORTIN G AND AUTOMOTIVE WAR RANTY & MAINTENANCE SERVICES 
(DECREE 116/2017/ND -CP) 
STATEMENT BY THE THAILAND  TO THE COMMITTEE ON TECHNICAL BARRIERS T O TRADE  
21 AND 22 MARCH 2018 
The following communication, dated 20 April  2018, is being circulated at the request of the 
delegation of the Thailand . 
 
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1.  Thailand respects the legitimate rights of Vietnam in protecting human health, safety and the 
environment. Howev er, as having stated in previous TBT Committee meeting and the recent 
bilateral consultation between Vietnam and Thailand, as well as in written comments submitted to 
Vietnam’s Enquiry point, we are very concerned that the Decree 116  will have had a seriou s 
impact on trade in automobiles.   
2.  We must remind Vietnam o f its obligations under the TBT Agreement to ensure that proposed 
technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures shall not be prepared, adopted or 
applied with the effect of creating u nnecessary obstacles to international trade.  
3.  The formation and application of the Decree 116 a ppears to be inconsistent with the TBT 
obligations. The regulation is applied in non -transparent, trade restrict ive and discriminatory 
manner.  
4.  It was found that Vietnam notified the Decree116 to WTO on 7 March 2018, after its effective 
date. Interested parties were not granted an opportunity to comment on proposed regulation.  
According to TBT Agreement, Vietnam should notify other members at an early appropriate s tage 
and allow reasonable time for other Members to make comments on the proposed regulations and 
take those comments into account.   
5.  Actually, the decree 116 was issued on 17 October 2017 and was effective on 1 January 2018. 
No reasonable period of time between announcement and the effective date of the regulation was 
allowed.  This is also the case of its circular 03 on inspecting quality of technical safety and 
environment protection for imported motor vehicles . The period was not sufficient for exportin g 
members to adapt their products to particular conformity assessment procedures which were 
newly introduced. Therefore, we urge Vietnam to delay the implementation of the Decree 116 to a 
minimum of one year.   
6.  The Articles 6, clause 2 of the Decree 116 req uires emission, quality and safety inspection for 
every single  lot of imported cars . This means that the same model of imported cars are required to 
repeatedly retest just because they are in different shipments. This is significantly time -consuming  
and co stly. This is inconsistent with the TBT Agreement provision on the ground that conformity 
assessment procedures shall not be more trade -restrictive than necessary to give the importing 
Member adequate confidence that products conform with the applicable re gulation.  
7.  In addition to this , it also appears that cars of Vietnamese origin are treated more favourable 
than those originating in other countries. Since their results of automobile checking and certificate 
are valid for 36 months whereas imported cars ar e subject to lot -by-lot inspection.  G/TBT/W/523  
 
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  8.  Thailand would appreciate it if Vietnam takes our concerns into consideration so as to fulfil the 
obligations of TBT agreement and to eliminate unnecessary obstacles to international trade.  
 
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