414 specialized documents applicable to imported and exported goods

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	There are still many problems for specialized inspection

Few enterprises implement procedures at the Centralized checkpoint of Quality Assurance Testing Center 1 at the Hai Phong port. Photo: T. Binh

Great barriers

At the online conference to summarize the performance of the first six months and deploy the tasks of the last six months of 2017 of the General Department of Customs, barriers of specialized inspections for imported and exported goods attract a lot of attention.

Director of Customs Supervision and Management Department under the General Department of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Duc Nga emphasized that it had been actually shown that the specialized inspections for imported and exported goods in the recent times had been great barriers, prolonged the Customs clearance time and increased costs for enterprises. This had been basic barriers for improvement of border commercial transaction index.

Mr. Nga pointed out many legal documents on specialized management and inspection, wide scope of management and inspection, many items without HS codes, lack of standards for inspection and overlaps in specialized management and inspection.

The issue of a series of legal nominative documents, wide scope of entities and items subject to special inspections and many items without HS code and overlap in specialized management and inspection causes serious difficulties for the business community and executive agencies such as Customs agencies.

Besides above obstacles, He also issued a series of reasons for the inadequacies and inefficiencies in the specialized management and inspection of imported-exported goods.

They were, the specialized inspections have been carried out manually, risk management has not been widely applied; accreditation of test results of products originating from developed countries such as G7 has not been applied; IT application in receiving and handling dossier, information exchange and accreditation of results have not been applied. Resources (including human resources, finance, equipment, machinery, working facilities) for specialized inspection tasks at border gates have been insufficient and weak.

In the other hand, some import and export enterprises have not realized their obligations and responsibilities in the implementation of regulations on specialized management and inspection, is a concern.

Post clearance audits must be applied

In order to remove too big obstacles and barriers related to specialized inspections, the General Department of Customs has issued many documents and proposals to the Government and other ministries.

At the Conference, General Director of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Van Can stated that one of the basic solutions to remove difficulties and improve the efficiency of specialized management was that the ministries and sectors should enhance the post-clearance audit, especially items of low risk and low violation rate. The inspection at Customs clearance at the border gate only applied to certain items of high risk related to national security, food safety, and public health.

Thereby, the policy on reducing Customs clearance time of the Government is effective.

Furthermore, Mr. Can directed the Customs Assessment Department to make statistics and give a specific number on the detection rate of violations on the total quantity of samples subject to specialized inspection.

He also requested that the ministries and sectors should include specific standards when promulgating a list of imports and exports subject to specialized management and inspection for the business community and Customs authorities to implement.

Specialized inspections are still great barriers VCN - According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the proportion of shipments subject to specialized ...

It is clear that the radical change in specialized management and inspection for imported and exported goods of ministries and sectors is an urgent requirement to be implemented immediately to meet the Government’s objectives set in Resolutions 19 on major tasks and solutions to improve the business environment and enhance national competitiveness.