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Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department talks with Customs Agents. Photo: T.H

"When harassed, send a message to the Director of the Customs Department"

Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department Dinh Ngoc Thang said this is the first time the organization has held a dialogue conference with the Customs Agents community on a large scale to support Customs Agents to operate in the most convenient and effective way.

According to statistics, there are more than 430 businesses in Ho Chi Minh City which have been granted certificates of recognition of operation by the General Department of Customs.

With a desire to develop Customs Agents activities as an extended arm of the Customs Department, the goal of the HCMC Customs Department is to achieve faster customs clearance, transparent policies and more professional staff. To accomplish this goal, HCMC Customs cannot do it alone but needs the co-ordination and assistance of Customs Agents.

Director Dinh Ngoc Thang said more than 400 Customs Agents must be the best in customs procedures, doing business to serve nearly 50,000 import and export enterprises throughout the area of ​​Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department pledged to create the most favourable conditions for Customs Agents to do business smoothly, wishing to build Customs Agents as an extension of the Customs.

In addition to knowing the regulations on customs procedures, Customs Agents must understand the regulations on specialized inspections to advise and guide goods owners when agents do procedures for them and avoid errors in the process of implementing this specialized inspection procedure.

Director Dinh Ngoc Thang spoke with enterprises. Photo: T.H

At the conference, the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City has responded to many professional problems for the Customs Agents.

In response to the company's reflection on some inadequacies in the process of customs clearance, Director Dinh Ngoc Thang published his e-mail address and phone number.

"When businesses cause difficulties for customs officers or harass them in the process of customs clearance, text or send me an email. I pledge to answer and solve the issue immediately,” Director Dinh Ngoc Thang said.

Concluding the conference, the Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department directed Dinh Ngoc Thang to direct the relevant units to acknowledge the questions of the business, which issues belong to the proposal to exceed the authority and the higher-level newspapers to consider. Leaders of branches meet businesses to solve questions of enterprises related to goods in transit and supervision.

Many new points for Customs Agents

According to the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City, with the goal of building a unified and synchronous legal environment, creating favourable conditions for the development of Customs Agents service development, and at the same time reviewing, amending and supplementing some contents in accordance with the actual situation arising through the implementation period, on April 16, 2019, the Ministry of Finance issued Circular 22/2019/ TT-BTC amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular No. 12 / 2015/ TT-BTC.

One of the important points in Circular 22 is the addition of rights and responsibilities of goods owners. Accordingly, Article 14 stipulates: “When arising Customs Agents contract, goods owners announce the list of Customs Agents to be on behalf of the goods owners to declare and carry out customs procedures for export and import goods through the trial of electronic customs data system before Customs Agents performs the declaration and customs procedures for export and import goods.”

The notification of the list of Customs Agents on behalf of the goods owners shall declare and carry out customs procedures in order to prevent the risk of agents taking advantage of the information of import-export enterprises to carry out customs procedures for fraudulent acts.

Circular 22 also provides very specific provisions on the responsibility of Customs Agents to sign agency contracts with goods owners. The person who is granted the code of the Customs Agents shall carry out the declaration and customs procedures on the basis of the agency contract signed with the goods owner. Customs Agents only presents agency contracts to Customs authorities to determine the responsibilities of the parties when there is a violation of customs law. The legal representative or the person authorized by the legal representative of Customs Agents in accordance with the law to sign and seal on the customs declaration and documents of the customs dossier specified in Clause 3, Article 18 of the Customs Law.

Customs agents may declare and carry out customs procedures only for goods exported or imported by goods owners after goods owners notify the offices of customs agents on behalf of goods owners to carry out customs procedures for import and export goods.

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In addition, many amendments and supplements have been included in Circular 22/2019/TT-BTC regarding procedures for issuance of customs clearance certificates; grant and revoke the code of Customs Agents staff; sequences and procedures for recognition and operation of Customs Agents.