Circular 12 of the Ministry of Industry and Trade causes problems

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Enterprises implement Customs procedures at Nhon Trach Customs Branch. Photo: Nguyen Hien.

According to Dong Nai Customs Department, on July 5, the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued Circular No. 12/2016 / TT-BCT (which took effective from August 20) on amendment and supplement of some articles of Circular No. 41/2012 / TT-BCT on December 21, 2012 of the Ministry of Industry and Trade on mineral exports.

Under the provisions of Circular 12, before implementing export procedures, enterprises must cooperate with the Customs authorities to sample and analyze each export shipment to determine the quality. The analysis of product quality is one of the required conditions to determine minerals eligibile for exporting or not.

According to Dong Nai Customs Department, these provisions are so confusing that they have caused many difficulties for Customs officers to perform, especially for the regulation about enterprises in cooperation with the Customs authorities to take samples for analysis before implementing export procedures. In fact, this regulation does not clearly define that enterprises should do that before registering export declaration or after registering export declaration (but not implementing Customs clearance).

Dong Nai Customs Department said that, supposing enterprises registered export declaration and then took samples for analysis, but the results of the analysis were overdue 15 days of the declaration, how should the case be handled?. In addition, in case the Customs authorities and enterprises took samples for analysis prior to registration of export declaration, whether the Customs authorities had the right to require businesses to complete the collection of goods at checkpoints or not.

Also, when taking samples for analysis, in the time waiting for the results of the analysis, how should the monitoring of gathered goods be done? And whether the Customs must seal the entire shipment to wait for analysis results or not? (in order to avoid duplicity of goods which are not the original samples for analysis).

If enterprises implement registration of declarations at a Customs Branch which is not the place for actual inspections of goods, what will the process of transporting goods to the place of inspection be implemented and how will it be supervised?. At that time, should Customs officers receiving declarations should seal all export shipments to hand over to Customs officers at another Customs Branch for actual inspections?

Dong Nai Customs Department also noted that, if enterprises which were minerals exporters transported cargoes by barge or ship at ports and then, the goods were transferred to trucks or containers over several days with a long way, what should the Customs do to monitor the implementation of transporting goods to ensure the proper samples for analysis?. Because in this case, after receiving the correct quantity of goods, the ship could leave, Customs has to take samples for analysis first.

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Regarding the above-mentioned problems, Dong Nai Customs Department has sent reports to the Customs Supervision and Management Department – the General Department of Vietnam Customs to recommend guidelines for uniform implementation of the Customs to operate and manage effectively.