Insufficient information makes violation detection rate through risk management low

Customs officers inspected containers of goods imported from France. Photo: Q.H

According to the statistics of the Risk Management Department, at the end of July, 2017, the Customs office have fulfilled procedures for more than 6 million import and export declarations, including 3,491,560 Green channel declarations (accounting for 57.53%), 2,273,515 Yellow channel declarations (accounting for 37.46%) and 304,337 Red channel declarations (accounting for 5.01%). In which, the rate of Yellow channel declarations was governed by around 60% of specialized management documents, and the Red channel declarations were 17%. The risk management for imported and exported goods has achieved progress and important results, contributing to the Customs reform and modernization.

Up to now, the GDVC has issued a Criteria Set, which is comprehensively applied to Customs operations. The channel classification and decision on inspection have basically met requirements on Customs management, reduced the inspection rate and ensured the trade facilitation, controlled the compliance of Customs law and facilitated import and export enterprises. Also, the Customs has actively controlled risk for key fields and areas of smuggling, tax evasion, and trade fraud.

However, the violation detection rate through paper examination and physical inspection is still low, below 1%. The Head of Risk Management Department explained that 3 factors affecting this result were: Mechanisms and policies; information and implementation. Presently, some mechanisms and policies had been not consistent and compatible with Customs management. That was, enterprises were permitted to declare 15 days before goods arrived at border gate. Thus, enterprises would know the result of channel classification in advance, which might affect the Customs inspection and control process. On the other hand, although the coordination regulation between the Risk Management Department and other Departments under the GDVC specified the information sharing, providing and updating to the system, the information updating to the system for search and exploitation was still limited. Customs officers in charge of risk management had not sufficient information to realize methods and tricks of smugglers for preparing plans in developing criteria of channel classification for inspection.

Regarding to restrictions in channel classification, a representative of Customs supervision and control Department said that the amendments and supplements to Circular No. 38/2015/TT-BTC and Decree no. 08/2015/ND-CP included contents related to pre-classification, cancellation, and correction of declarations and contents related to the competence of inspection. Accordingly, for imported goods, the result of channel classification was only informed when the goods arrived at border gate (except imported goods of authorized economic operators and imported goods for processing and manufacturing). For exported goods, the Customs would classify the channel as soon as the declaration was registered in order to comply with the export promotion policy as well as to strengthen inspection and supervision measures. In case of having a suspicion of infringing shipment, the Customs would stop the shipment at the supervision area to inspect before the shipment was transported to the seaport for export. Amendments to the declaration would follow the Customs Law 2014, which meant that after channel classification if enterprises wanted to amend their declarations, they would be sanctioned for administrative violation.

In order to improve quality and efficiency of risk management, the GDVC requested the Risk Management Department to develop Procedures on collecting and processing information for Customs risk management, in which detailing the information sharing, providing and processing between risk management unit and Customs operation units at all levels; stipulating obligations on updating information and results of Customs supervision and inspection, post-clearance audit and other operations to the Customs information system. At the same time, enhancing the management and assessment of enterprise’s compliance; risk assessment and classification in accordance with the actual situation of each area, each sector, industry, and operating-type to monitor and control in a timely fashion for enterprises at high risk.