New style number plates are being issued with every new vehicle registration or change

of ownership by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.

The plates have a unique Cambodian identity with the owner's province stated in Khmer

above and English below the registration number. The registration number itself uses

the Roman alphabet, not Khmer, and there is a number code for different vehicle classes.

Prices have not been increased.

Srey Sirey Vadh, Deputy Director of the Ministry's Land Transport Department said

that since early 2004 the department has been requiring purchasers of new vehicles

and those transferring ownership to use a new number plate.

From 2006 all vehicle owners who have old cards and number plates will be required

to exchange them for the new one.

Government vehicle fleets are changing to new plates progressively, starting with

the Senate, National Assembly, Royal Government, Constitutional Council, National

Election Committee and State ministries/institutions. The two largest, Ministry of

National Defense and Ministry of Interior will switch in 2006.

Sirey Vadh said old number plates were easy to falsify; also the authority cannot

keep track of how many old registered vehicles were sold to Laos and Vietnam.

"I get a lot of complaints when there are traffic accidents; for example, someone

notes the vehicle number which caused the accident, and we check in the registration

book of the Land Transport Department, and some vehicles are not correct. With the

new registration we will eventually have all vehicles on an IT database."

Total registrations up to 2003 were 447,471: 336,502 motorbikes, 93,590 cars and

17,375 trucks. Sirey Vadh said he had no idea how many vehicles were unregistered.