Bac Ninh Customs: Control strictly the import-export of precursor substances

Bac Ninh Customs officials inspected imported goods. Photo: T.Trang

The management area is spread over 3 provinces of Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Thai Nguyen along with many enterprises operating in the field of industrial production, thus the amount of chemicals imported to serve the production were also abundant. By determining the inspection, supervision and control of import-export activities in general and industrial precursor substances in particular as an important task of the Customs sector, Customs enforcement unit - Bac Ninh Customs Department has studied the actual situation and proactively proposed to the leaders of the Department to develop a control plan of industrial precursor substance items of enterprises operating in the area.

Discussing with Customs News reporters, head of Bac Ninh Customs Enforcement Unit said that in order to implement this content, Customs Enforcement Unit and related units always receive the concern of leaders of the Department through giving direction timely in coordinating to develop the detailed work plan and implementing the guiding documents of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the annual work plan of Bac Ninh Customs Department. In particular, focusing on the inspection of the contents such as business licenses of import and export business, licenses for import of industrial precursor substances; Customs dossiers related to import of industrial precursor substances,...

According to leaders of Bac Ninh Customs Enforcement Unit, most of the enterprises that were inspected complied well with the policies, procedures and regulations related to import and export of chemicals and industrial precursor substances. In the working process, the enterprises have cooperated well in providing full dossiers, documents required by the Customs authorities. The common mistakes of enterprises have been detected, corrected and handled: import the same items of chemical, industrial precursor substances but some shipments have the permit and some shipments do not; Not implementing the declaration or incorrect declaration/missing the criteria on the declaration such as: License number; trade name/symbol; chemical composition, precursor substances...

The difficulty that this force encountered today is the documents system, compared with the previous regulations related to the field of chemicals and industrial precursor substances is basically complete. However, in the implementation process, there are still many obstacles incurred that require timely guidance from the issuing authorities in order to ensure the unification in the application and management. For example, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (Vietnam Chemicals Agency) have an exchange document with the General Department of Vietnam Customs regarding the implementation of Decree 113/2017/ND-CP; Accordingly, consumer goods containing industrial precursor substances are not subject to apply for import license. However, there is no specific regulation for identification and the specific list of consumer goods containing industrial precursor substances which do not need to be subject to apply for import license. Thus it causes many difficulties for both enterprises and Customs authorities in the work of management and inspection.

Besides that, on the side of enterprises, in the process of inspection, the Customs Enforcement Unit found that the enterprises still have subjective thinking and they are not aware of the importance and responsibilities in the import, management and use of chemicals, industrial precursor substances; The lack of study of documents and regulations on management policies for chemicals and industrial precursor substances. They just considered those items as normal import goods.

Moreover, during the process of applying for import license, for many reasons, the enterprises did not directly go to the competent authorities for implement procedure. They went to service agencies for carry out procedure for applying for import license but they did not check and compare the results before implement import procedures hence it leads to mistakes when the content of the license was inaccurate.

In addition, some enterprises hired one or many logistics companies for implementing customs declaration of the import shipments but they did not manage closely or chose the service agencies which were not professional and make inaccurate consultation on policies,... As a result, some shipments which need to have import license, did not apply for import license or did not declare full name of goods, chemical components, precursor substances, etc., Therefore, it caused many difficulties for customs authorities in their management, inspection and handling activities.

Typically, in June of 2017, the Bac Ninh Customs Enforcement Unit checked and punished an enterprise in the area due to importing goods without a license. The administrative fine was 25 million VND with additional fine for remittance of money equal to the goods value and infringing goods was 74.570 million VND.

In the process of implementing the control plan for industrial precursor substances, despite the low staffing and wide management area, the process of preparing and supplying dossiers as well as conducting inspection and comparison took a lot of time even some enterprises are located far away, the Customs Enforcement Unit of Bac Ninh province has tried to overcome the difficulties, concentrated on accomplishing their duty; the inspection has been following the rule of publicity, objectively and complying with regulations, ensuring the spirit of cooperation between enterprises and Customs authorities.

With the efforts in 2017, the Unit checked 11/11 enterprises as planned; Advised the leaders of the Department in order to direct relevant units to make records on administrative violations in the Customs field, issued sanctioning decisions for 4 enterprises with the total principal fine and additional fine of over 200 million VND.

With the above results have helped Bac Ninh Customs to promptly detect, prevent and strictly handle in accordance with the regulations on wrongdoing,. It has contributed to stabilize the security and safety of social order, ensure the implementation of regulations’ effectiveness. This is also the basis for planning programs, work plans as well as solutions, remedial measures, warning, guiding to the business community for self-compliance and compliance with the regulations, procedures, management policies of import and export.