Extension of time for physical inspection of goods to be no more than two days

In response to the question of Phu My 3 BOT Power Company Limited about the time of conducting physical inspection of goods, in order to facilitate businesses, the General Department of Vietnam Customs quickly provided an answer.

Accordingly, Clause 2, Article 23 of the Customs Law 2014 stipulates that the time limit for the customs authority to complete the inspection of the dossier is two working hours from the time of receiving the complete customs dossier and the time limit for completing the physical inspection of goods is eight working hours after the customs declarant presents all goods to the customs office.

HCM City Customs check imported raw material for processing. Photo: T.H

In case the consignment has a large quantity, variety of categories or the inspection is complicated, the manager of the customs branch shall decide to extend the time for conducting physical inspection of goods, but the maximum extension shall not exceed two days.

Compared with the above regulations, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the settlement of imported goods is carried out as follows: For the inspection of goods, each declaration is a part of the shipment, according to the design of VNACCS system, in case a shipment has more than 300 lines of goods as presented by Phu My 3 BOT Power Company, it must be declared on multiple branch declarations, these declarations may be classified differently and independently of each other about the processing steps on the system.

Accordingly, the Customs Law does not stipulate in case a shipment must be declared on many branch declarations but one declaration belongs to the Red channel, all the remaining declarations must be channeled to the Red channel for physical inspection.

Therefore, based on the results of the channelization and the direction of the leaders of the customs branch on conducting physical inspection of goods, the customs officer will inspect and check the documents, complete the procedures with each declaration to ensure that the entire consignment is eligible to pass through the monitoring area.

Accordingly, the time limit for the customs officer to complete the inspection of the dossier is two working hours from the time of receiving the complete customs dossier and the completion of the physical inspection of the goods within 8 working hours from the date the customs declarant presents all goods.

However, in case the consignment has a large quantity, many types or the inspection is complicated, the manager of customs branch shall decide to extend the time for conducting physical inspection of goods, but the maximum extension time shall not exceed two days.

To facilitate customs procedures, the General Department of Vietnam Customs requests Phu My 3 BOT Power Company Limited to provide all customs documents and present all goods to the Customs authority within a short period of time, creating conditions for the Customs authority to complete the inspection of documents and physical inspection of goods within the time limit as specified in Article 23 of the Law on Customs.