Customs sector strengthen to handle administrative violation on food safety

Customs officials of Investment and Processing Customs Branch (HCM City Customs Department) instructed procedures for enterprises. Photo: T.H

Accordingly, in order to ensure the proper sanctioning of administrative violations, the General Department of Vietnam Customs requested the units to organize customs officials in the units to thoroughly research and implement the provisions of the Decree 115/2018/ND-CP.

At the same time, organize the dissemination of the contents of Decree 115/2018/ND-CP to the customs declarants and tax payers.

The Decree No. 115/2018/ND-CP will be valid on 20/10/2018 and replaces the Decree No.178/2013/ND-CP. The Decree No. 115/2018/ND-CP contains 4 chapters, 39 articles, which stipulate the sanction levels for administrative violations in food safety which are more of a deterrent than in Decree No. 178/2013/ND-CP.

In particular, the Decree 115/2018 / ND-CP stipulates that the principal sanctioning form is pecuniary penalty and does not include or stipulate the form of warning, increases the level of pecuniary penalty in the acts, the maximum level is increased up to 7 times the value of infringing goods (3.5 times as before).

As with the use of animals which have not taken veterinary hygiene inspection as prescribed for food production or processing, instead of pecuniary penalty by 80 - 100% of the total value of infringing food, now, the sanction level is increased by 1-2 times of the value of food. Previously with the same violation, the penalty was not more than 100 million VND, this penalty has now ceased.

Furthermore, the Decree No. 115/2018/ND-CP also stipulates many acts of punishment for deprivation of the right to use food safety certificates, certificates of acceptance of product announcement, operation suspension for a definite period of time, confiscation of goods in violation; Additional penalties such as compulsory withdrawal of product self-announcement, forcible destruction of foods, force forfeiture of food, forcible payment of handling food poisoning, force to return the amount of money that is equivalent to the value of infringing goods in case of there being no exhibits.

In addition, the Decree No. 115/2018/ND-CP contains a provision on post-inspection (Article 38) in order to be in line with the food management method, transfer from pre-check to post-inspection as stipulated in Decree No. 15/2018/ND-CP dated 2/2/2018 of the Government regulating specifically the implementation of some articles of the Law on Food Safety (replacing Decree No. 38/2012/ND-CP).

The enterprises, customs declarants, taxpayers, customs officials could download the content here: ND1152018CP.doc