Deputy Director General of Vietnam Customs Vu Ngoc Anh: The matters of SCCP2 meeting have met concern of APEC members

Deputy Director General of Vietnam Customs Vu Ngo Anh.

Dear Sir, what has been discussed on single window system in the meeting?

The meeting agreed to implement the national single window mechanism and a single window in APEC is one of the most important measures to facilitate trade, reduce administrative procedures and reduce time and expense for enterprises in business among APEC member countries.

The meeting also discussed more on the topic, in that, the sharing experiences and best practices of member economies as well as the World Customs Organization (WCO) norms. Thus, member economies could rely on those norms to build their own national single window system as well as connecting their national single window to single window systems of another member of APEC.

What are Vietnam’s opinions on this matter?

Vietnam has implemented the national single window mechanism since 2014, and established the National single window Committee which is chaired by Deputy Prime Minister (from the time of Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh till now is Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue), in that gathering many ministries and sectors in which the Customs is the standing body. Vietnam Customs has built up a national single window system in that ministries can exchange administrative procedures on this system via paperless manner.

On that basis, the enterprises and the customs declarer can send the information to the system and the government agency will rely on that information to make their own decisions then return that information to Customs clearance system. From that, Customs authorities will rely on that information to continue customs procedure and clearance for the goods of customs declarer.

Vietnam has done this and is continuing to expand the administrative procedures of ministries currently. For example Procedures for issuance of import-export permits, inspection papers as well as specialized inspection exemption. At present, we have implemented nearly 40 administrative procedures on the national single window system and will continue to expand other administrative procedures.

Among the topics that Vietnam has offered, such as trade facilitation and controlling imports and exports safely in countries. How are these topics reach an agreement by the delegates?

There are two issues that are the connection between member economies to ensure trade facilitation as well as global supply chain security and in the fight against smuggling, trade fraud for security guarantees.

All these topics have been submitted by Vietnam and agreed by the countries. In addition, Vietnam has proposed the implementation of Trade Facilitation Agreement of World Trade Organization (WTO). This activity was also shared by APEC members and accepted as a topic for the main discussion.

As a chair, Vietnam Customs successfully organized SCCP2 and received high appreciation from APEC members. Could you share Vietnam Customs's efforts in terms of organization and content development for the meeting?

Vietnam is also on the general theme of APEC so through that Vietnam Customs try to make great efforts. We have built various topics for this meeting, ranging from the national single window, connecting and sharing information among member economies to the implementation of risk management, IT applications,…

All of these topics have responded to the common interest of member economies. To answer the question: “how can we access the new scientific and technological revolution related to e-commerce?” At the same time, not only for trade facilitation but also strengthening trade security in APEC.

That is all the issues that Vietnam has built up the content together with the member economies in order to make it become diversity.

How is the success of the SCCP organized by Vietnam Customs expected to contribute to the overall success of APEC 2017 in Vietnam, sir?

The Sub-Committee on Customs Procedure (SCCP) is one of the activities under the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI). In that, it addresses a lot of issues related to administrative procedures, information technology application, ensuring a fair and secure trade.

The SCCP meeting discussed on many problems about administrative procedures, paperwork, and trade security. These are the most important contributions to how to ensure that trade and investment environment among APEC member economies can mitigate administrative procedures, reduce costs and increase investment. As well as increasing the volume of trade among member economies. I think these are important contributions of the SCCP.

As you said that strengthening the trade connection of APEC economies in terms of customs clearance, so how many percents of goals have been achieved?

This issue does not have a specific indicator to indicate what percentage has been achieved. We can only do so through the Customs capacity building of each member, the way they have developed and apply technical and technological measures. Also, depending on how much information technology is used and which level of risk management has been implemented,...

Each member economy has its own evaluation criteria so we just have comparable indicators in APEC. There is no general indicator for 21 member economies.

Thank you so much!