To get a car immediately, customers have to pay several thousand USD more or they have to register and wait for several months. In that context, many people in Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces are going to Laos to buy cars which are both cheap and good.

Hoa, from Dien Chau, Nghe An province, said he bought a Ford Focus in Vientiane (Laos) at the price of $18,000 while the same car is priced at $37,000 in Vietnam. Phan Quang’s family in Nghe An owns five cars which have Lao licence numbers.

As the need for cars is rising, many people in Nghe An and Ha Tinh have become traders of Lao cars. According to a car trader named H, a BMW 3-Series costs $29,000-37,500 in Laos but it is $41,500-48,000 in Vietnam. A Toyota Land Cruiser is $55,300 in Laos and it is $72,100 in Vietnam.

Customers in the central region favour Lao cars because of the cheap prices and simple registration formalities.

To own a Lao car, Vietnamese customers need to find a Lao citizen to buy and register a car and temporarily import the car into Vietnam and then they extend the temporary import date for the car every month, paying only VND200,000.

Most Lao cars running in central provinces are temporarily imported via the international border gates of Cau Treo in Ha Tinh province, Lao Bao in Quang Tri province, and Nam Can in Nghe An province.

Under a protocol signed between Laos and Vietnam, cars of the two countries are allowed to run in the territories of each other for 30 days. After this deadline, the car owners can go to the border gates to perform temporary import formalities again to continue using the car for 30 days more.

Source: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/05/781507/