Hai Phong: More than 18 tonnes of ivory and pangolin scales seized in five years

Ivory was seized by Hai Phong Customs Department in January 2019. Photo: T.Bình

Head of the department’s Risk Management Division Nguyen Ngoc Khanh said that through the implementation of risk control topics, the unit discovered many cases of smuggling and trade fraud in the past five years, contributing to the State budget VND 140 billion. In particular, a large number of banned items were seized including 3,961 tonnes of ivory, 14,321 tonnes of pangolin scales and 11.9 tonnes of sandalwood.

"More importantly, basically, controlled the situation of smuggling and trade frauds through the management area of Hai Phong Customs Department," Nguyen Ngoc Khanh emphasised.

Besides that, every year, the Risk Management Division has set up control criteria, regularly eliminating ineffective criteria with hundreds of thousands of criteria on the system and is always a leading unit in terms of the number of established criteria, as well as violation detection rate.

Notably, to the scanning task (by container scanning machine), Hai Phong Customs Department has paid special attention. Customs officials have been trained to improve their qualifications and have experience in analysing information and images to improve the effectiveness of scanning.

Scanning has become an effective tool in combating smuggling and trade fraud, detecting many cases of smuggling banned goods such as ivory and pangolin scales with sophisticated tricks of hidding.

Hai Phong Customs Department is also the leading unit in the sector in terms of the number of scanning containers and rate of detecting violations.

Specifically, in the last five years, 102,295 containers were scanned, 368 violations were found, the amount of fines was VND 3.4 billion and an increase of VND 6.7 billion of tax.

Despite achieving encouraging results, leaders of the Risk Management Division (Hai Phong Customs Department) said this important professional task still had limitations and shortcomings that had to be overcome.

In particular, the use of container scanning machine and efficiency of using scanning machines were still low compared to capacity; the rate of violation detection was not high, which did not yet meet requirements in preventing, warning, deterring and detecting smuggling and trade fraud when the situation of daily smuggling and trade fraud was very complex.

To improve the effectiveness of risk management task, including the use of container scanning machine, leaders of the Risk Management Division proposed several important solutions.

That is, reviewing to promptly propose to the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Vietnam Customs to adjust and amend shortcomings in laws, policies, processes and procedures related to risk management in order to apply risk management into practice effectively in all stages of operation.

Advisory units should be proactive in researching tax documents and policies, commodity policies and business processes to devise appropriate, effective control measures, and at the same time provide instructions, warn on the system to support customs officials in their operations and limit systematic errors

Establishing risk control topics in each period, each stage in accordance with the situation; improve the efficiency of setting up criteria, regularly eliminating ineffective criteria and strengthen pre-scanning of high-risk shipments.

Promote coordination, analysis, collection and sharing of information among units in the department to serve the work of each unit, build effective relationships with other units within the sector such as Anti-Smuggling and Investigation Department, Risk Management Department, Legal Department, local customs departments.