HCM City Customs: businesses are set as the center of reform

Customs officers of Tan Son Nhat International Airport instruct customs procedures to an enterprise. Photo: T.H

Flexibility in business support

As an enterprise which is specialized in importing seafood by air, Mr. Le Hong An, representative of Kome 88 company limited, said that the company carried out import procedures for one to two shipments of fresh seafood through Tan Son Nhat International Airport almost every day.

With the characteristics of imported goods such as fresh seafood, it must be preserved by a special method. Hence, Tan Son Nhat International Airport Customs Branch always facilitates clearance procedures for this specific type of shipment.

“The clearance time is faster helping enterprises to ensure not only quality of goods but also in-time delivery, saving time and costs for the company,” An said.

“Moreover, during the pandemic, the transportation of goods faced many difficulties. However, with the flexibility of Customs in applying IT into customs supervision and declaration, the enterprise’s cargo had been cleared in time,” An added.

In addition, many trade facilitation projects launched by HCM City Customs Department are highly appreciated by enterprises. Mr. Nguyen Bao Tung, CEO of Asia industrial chemical joint stock company, said the volume of imported goods of the company which was raw materials for food additives and processing, was very high.

On average, the company opened about 300 import declarations of this item per month to serve food production enterprises in Vietnam. The company is participating in the Trade Facilitation Project: Customs procedures in logistics and anti-congestion activities at Cat Lai port carried out by Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, so they have received great support in cargo clearance.

“With a very large amount of goods cleared every day, but we do not have any difficulties in customs procedures, because all stages from opening customs declarations, paying taxes, clearing goods are done on the electronic system software provided by Customs authority,” Mr. Tung said.

Mr. Bernardo Bautista, Managing Director and Country Manager, DHL Express Vietnam, said: “We always receive enthusiastic support from the Customs, especially the HCM City Express Customs Branch in the process of cargo clearance for customers. Besides reforming and simplifying procedures, HCM City Express Customs Branch also applied many effective management programs, such as synchronous solutions and automatic replies for dossiers of Express Delivery and Postal businesses.

“Before the introduction of this application, we had to spend a lot of time and effort because we had to manually do all the paperwork related to import shipments by printing and submitting it directly to the Customs authority. With the application on HCAS of Customs, the records are processed in electronic form and the response is sent quickly via email. For businesses having a large volume of goods that need to be exploited like DHL, this application is especially useful because of its high connectivity, saving time and costs.”

A reliable partner, accompanying the economic development

With the goal of "Ho Chi Minh City Customs and the business community are reliable partners, accompanying economic development", for many years, HCM City Customs has always accompanied the business community through promoting reform and modernization, creating maximum convenience for businesses to reduce time and costs when carrying out clearance procedures, contributing to promoting production, and creating a transparent and fair business investment environment.

Especially, during two years affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, HCM City Customs Department has implemented many projects and plans. At the same time, they actively advised and proposed many specific and practical solutions to the leaders of HCM City Party Committee and the People's Committee to facilitate trade and develop the logistics industry to reduce costs for businesses.

At a conference on disseminating legal policies for businesses held recently, the Director of HCM City Customs Department Dinh Ngoc Thang pledged to continue to build and develop the partnership and companionship between Customs authorities and the business community.

The commitments of the Director of HCM City Customs Department will be fulfilled by the drastic implementation of key tasks and solutions, safe adaptation, flexibility, quick response to all circumstances, proactively receiving information and promptly taking action to handle and resolve in a timely manner; seriously and effectively implement Directive No. 439/CT-TCHQ of the General Department of Vietnam Customs on synchronous and drastic implementation of solutions to facilitate trade, improve the effectiveness of state management, and prevent loss of revenue; promote administrative reform, simplify customs procedures towards paperless following the spirit of Directive 384/CT-TCHQ dated February 8, 2022 of the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

In addition, Mr. Dinh Ngoc Thang said the unit would continue to work closely with logistics associations to promote the role of a customs broker which is really an extension of the Customs authority, a bridge between Customs and businesses, towards professionalism, voluntary compliance with the law when carrying out customs procedures and transparency of procedures.

Furthermore, the unit would regularly "advise" the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City on plans to develop logistics services to improve the investment environment and coordinate trade facilitation within the Customs sector. To step up the communication and dissemination of the law in various forms and contents; regularly consult and organize dialogues with enterprises to receive ideas and recommendations to solve difficulties.