HÀ NỘI — Demand for child safety seats has surged ahead of a July 1 requirement for young children to use restraint systems in cars, but no testing or certification body has yet been authorised to certify the products, prompting the Vietnam Register to seek temporary measures from the Ministry of Construction to address the bottleneck.

Under the Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety, children under 10 years old and shorter than 1.35 metres travelling in passenger cars must use appropriate child restraint systems from July 1, except when travelling on passenger transport service vehicles.

To implement the requirement, the Ministry of Transport, now the Ministry of Construction, issued national technical standard QCVN 123:2024/BGTVT on child restraint systems, effective from January 1.

According to the Vietnam Register child safety seats are classified as medium-risk products and must obtain conformity certification before manufacturers, importers and distributors can complete conformity declaration procedures and place them on the market.

However, no organisation has yet been granted a registration certificate required to become an authorised certification body for QCVN 123:2024/BGTVT, although the demand for conformity certification was growing rapidly as companies prepared for the mandatory use requirement from the beginning of next month.

This leaves businesses with no pathway to certify their products, raising concerns about potential disruptions to production, imports and sales if the issue remains unresolved.

To tackle the bottleneck, the Vietnam Register has urged the Ministry of Construction to issue guidance to local authorities on procedures for registering certification and testing under QCVN 123:2024/BGTVT.

The agency also called for greater outreach to encourage qualified conformity assessment organisations to register for certification activities.

The Vietnam Register also used early issuance of a list classifying products and goods by risk level to provide a legal basis for conformity certification and declaration procedures for child safety seats.

In case no qualified testing and certification organisation is available after July 1, the Vietnam Register proposed that the Ministry of Construction temporarily designate the Vehicle Motor Testing Centre (VMTC) to conduct testing of child safety seats under QCVN 123:2024/BGTVT.

It also recommended authorising the Vietnam Register to carry out certification for up to six months, or until qualified certification bodies become operational.

The certification bottleneck arose as demand for child safety seats has surged ahead of the July 1 implementation date.

Retailers and e-commerce platforms have reported strong growth in sales as parents rush to comply with the new requirement.

According to e-commerce data platform Metric.vn, sales of child safety seats on major online marketplaces, including Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop and Tiki, reached about VNĐ78.2 billion (US$3 million) in the first five months of 2026, up 116 per cent from a year earlier.

The number of units sold rose by 78 per cent year-on-year to around 78,000, with 877 online stores participating in the market.

The growing demand has also highlighted concerns over product quality, with hundreds of models available across a wide price range on the market, from full child safety seats to lower-cost cushions and harness-type devices.

With no authorised certification body, parents have limited means of verifying whether products comply with the technical requirements.

Under QCVN 123:2024/BGTVT, child restraint systems must be complete safety devices comprising a rigid seat structure, harnesses and locking mechanisms capable of being securely attached to a vehicle and meeting dynamic crash-test requirements. — VNS