Ministries have planned to shorten the list of goods in group 2

The rate of registration fee applies to pickups and load valve remains by 2%. Photo: Hà Phương

The Deputy Director Customs Control and Supervision Division of Commercial Export/Import (General Department of Customs) Le Nguyen Viet Ha said, as stipulated in Article 34 of the Law on Product Quality, imported goods in group 2 must be declared, have a certificate of conformity and the quality must be checked when importing. The Customs Authority will do clearance only after the goods have received quality certification and import of quality inspection agencies, for the same importer, the same manufacturer, from the same origin, but shipments would have to be checked, causing increased costs and time to importers. If authorities do not recognize the results of each shipment, this must lead to quality control which must also lead to increased costs, and extended clearance time for business. In addition, when the goods are not released pending the results of quality control, including in the case of bringing goods for preservation, the Customs authorities will perform the task of monitoring the shipment until the clearance of goods.

In order to reduce the time for checking the quality of imported goods, there needs to be comprehensive reform in regulations about the certificate of conformity and quality checking of imported goods in the list of goods in group 2. Accordingly, the Ministry of Finance (General Department of Customs) proposed that Ministries need to review and suggest to the National Assembly and the Government to amended the content that relates to quality control of imported goods under the Law of technical standard and law of products quality as follows: For imported goods that require a certificate of conformity and declared in conformity with the law, the importer must complete the requirement before products are introduced into the market; for cargo which doesn’t have a certificate of conformity and quality certification of authorized organization or goods of the enterprise which violated the regulation in checking product quality, quality must be checked before clearance.

In order to define correctly the point in reducing clearance time which needs to be separated from checking time and evaluation time, is the major issue in the discussion between many Ministries after the meeting of the Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam at the Ministry of Science and Technology.

According to the Ministry of Science and Technology, following the direction of the Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, the Ministry cooperates with other Ministries to review imported goods in group 2. Then, making agreement with other Ministries about solutions in order to reduce time for specialist inspections, such as: To push up the implementation of quality evaluation at the manufacture of exporting countries, accelerate implementation of the mechanism of recognition of results, change the management mechanism for imported goods from the quality inspection before clearance (pre-audit) to quality control after Customs clearance (post-audit),… Also the ministries have agreed to remove the non-risky goods out of the list in order to reduce the clearance time but still ensure the product quality and safety. So they can protect the consumers as well as domestic enterprises.

Currently, many Ministries have planned to review in order to shorten the list of goods in group 2. The Ministry of Construction has issued National technical Standard for managing building material which has 64 items of goods needed to manage. The Ministry of Construction is proposing to remove 36 items of out the list and keep 28 items in the remaining list. The Ministry of Health has a total number of products in group 2 of 6 classes of goods which include 57 items belonging to 4 groups and others is group 2 related to medicine. The Ministry of Health proposed to remove 2 groups of goods out of the list with 26 products.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has a total of products in group 2 of 3 groups which have 2 commodity groups including 41 specific products and 1 product group related to textile products. The Ministry of Industry and Trade has proposed to remove from the list 1 group of goods (textile products types are now managed under the provisions of Circular 37/2015 / TT-BCT).

For the Ministry of Science and Technology, they have 6 group of products and merchandise. The Ministry does not propose to remove any product. However, they have proposed to change the implementation in product selection. Products in group 2 that have high risk need to have certificate of conformity to be done before clearance). For goods in group 2 that have low risk need to a have certificate of conformity (implemented in post audit).