Lang Son Customs: Proposing a private process for land border gates to deploy VASSCM

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Goods are cleared at Tan Thanh border gate. Photo: H. Nu

Actively connect with businesses

Talking to a Customs Newspaper reporter, Mr. Le Duc Tho, Deputy Director of Lang Son Customs Department said, in order to expand VASSCM, the unit has actively and urgently organized all warehouses and yards in areas under its management; thoroughly disseminated the contents and plans of VASSCM deployment to each civil servant and mobilized all resources for the implementation. At the same time, the Department has also guided and widely propagated to organizations, individuals and businesses carrying out import and export procedures in the area to actively participate and implement; organized conferences with warehouse, yard and port operators in the area; announced and disseminated policies and plans to connect VASSCM with the system of warehouse, yard, port operators, which was appreciated by the business community.

The unit has also worked with partners which provide terminal software for businesses; guided and supported warehouse and yard operators in selecting terminal software to ensure conditions for connecting with VASSCM; reviewed the issuance of account decentralization to all civil servants in the monitoring, exploitation, use and operation chain on the system.

Mr. Le Duc Tho added, so far, there are 19/19 warehouse and yard operators in the area that have installed the software. The unit has officially connected the system to 4 locations for gathering, inspecting and supervising import and export goods, managed by Tan Thanh Customs Branch.

Specifically, the unit has officially connected with Thien Loc Development Investment Company; Van Son Company Limited, Thuan Phat Lang Son Company and Thanh Phat Trading Investment Company. In particular, Thien Loc Development Investment Company officially connected on October 24, 2018 and the remaining 3 companies officially connected on October 25, 2018.

Lang Son Customs Department said that the unit has also exchanged and suggested enterprises to note the declaration of the unique reference code, as well as “expected warehouses storing goods waiting for clearance”, and “destination for reservation tax” for the import and export declarations.

Many problems

Although Lang Son Customs has implemented connection with warehouse and yard operators in the area, due to the special characteristics of land border gates, import and export goods are carried by means of transport (cars) without bill of lading, thus there is no information on the vehicle taking goods to warehouse and yard. This means that both the Customs authority and warehouse and yard operators have no information to compare to the actual goods which are loaded and unloaded.

Imported goods transported by means of transport (Chinese cars) to warehouses and yards in Vietnam to carry out imports, loading and unloading is often concentrated from 13:00 to 17:00 o’clock daily with 300 to 700 vehicles / day, making it difficult for warehouse and yard operators in collecting and updating data into the system. Besides, because there is no information about the vehicles before goods arrival, warehouse and yard operators are not active in developing plans for operation and exploitation, leading to congestion at the border gate area, significantly affecting the Customs clearance time.

On the other hand, due to inadequate awareness of the role and importance of VASSCM deployment, goods in and out are not closely monitored, the qualification of staff assigned to operate and deploy the system have not been well trained and lack confidence in performing operations on the system. Thus, difficulties in VASSCM deployment in Lang Son are significant - the representative of Lang Son Customs emphasized.

Therefore, in order to implement VASSCM effectively without affecting import and export activities at the border gate, Lang Son Customs Department said that it is necessary to build a process suitable to the specialized characteristics of the land border gate and stipulate that goods owner or importer must declare information about goods before its arrival at the border gate.

In particular, in order to have a basis for collecting and processing goods information for Customs supervision, Lang Son Customs proposed the General Department of Customs to build a form for the goods owner or importer to declare in advance on the National Single Window system (specifying the time for advance declaration), through the integration of declaration right at the current software with which enterprises are declaring Customs declarations (information indicators are similar to those in e-Mannifest). Accordingly, shared information with warehouse and yard operators will be a basis for input information of the shipment.

Lang Son: many restrictions in the operation of warehouses, the gathering places for import/export goods

Lang Son Customs said that if there is software installed, this process will solve the problem of cargo congestion at the border gate area, contributing to reducing Customs clearance time. In particular, warehouse and yard operators are also active in developing plans for operation and exploitation, reducing costs and raising capacity of managing and supervising goods in, out and backlogged at warehouses and yards.