AmCham taking the initiative in reforming customs procedures to help improve the effeciency of import-export activities

Customs sector has equipped many modern specialised equipments. Photo: Hồng Vân

Reporting on tax and customs policy issues, the Tax and Customs Working Group of VBF said that in recent years, the Vietnamese Government as well as enterprises have faced many great challenges in improving the efficiency of operations to compete with regional countries.

Therefore, relevant ministries and agencies have issued, supplemented or amended a lot of regulations to remove difficulties, support enterprises to operate more efficiently and improve the investment environment and increase Vietnam's competitiveness index, thereby attracting foreign investors.

Commenting on the customs modernisation process, Amanda Rasmussen, President of the American Business Association in Vietnam (AmCham), said the US business community in Vietnam highly appreciated the effort and progress of the General Department of Vietnam Customs and a few local customs branches in modernising customs procedures and improving transparency and efficiency for Vietnamese exporters and importers.

She said it was necessary to strengthen streamlining and transparency in clearance procedures, including the flexibility in regulating express delivery services.

In addition, representatives of the US business community in Vietnam said that businesses supported the agreement on mutual assistance in customs operation of Vietnam - US and looked forward to the implementation of this agreement. AmCham also expected better implementation of rules of pre-certified origin.

“We believe that the compliance and efficiency will be improved if many businesses were aware of which goods meet the rules of pre-certified origin; such as the classification, evaluation and verification of the origin, the procedure to perform these steps,” Rasmussen said.

Along with that, AmCham also highly appreciated the new start of the Government in regulating Customs to be the focal point for goods quality inspection.

"The current collaboration between the General Department of Vietnam Customs and Trade Facilitation Project of USAID provided an opportunity to examine many other customs issues that exist in the business community," Rasmussen said.

However, the Tax and Customs Working Group said there were still some provisions related to imports and exports that need to be amended. Typically, regulating more clearly about post-clearance audit activities, avoid overlapping; the provision on refund of export goods assigned to export processing enterprise partially or wholly processed need guidance documents or regulating specifically for each case to solve difficulties and avoid double taxation for businesses.