National Single Window and specialized inspection are expected to continue improving

Deputy General Director of the General Department of Customs Hoang Viet Cuong spoke at the workshop. Photo: Quang Hung

In the context of being affected by the Covid-19 epidemic and unpredictable fluctuations of the world economy and politics, importing and exporting goods is still an area with outstanding achievements in Vietnam recently. According to the General Statistics Office, Vietnam's total import and export turnover in 2021 reached US$668.5 billion, an increase of 22.6% over the previous year. Generally, in the first nine months of 2022, goods' total import and export turnover will reach US$558.52 billion, which is expected to reach over US$700 billion for the whole year.

Mr. Hoang Quang Phong, Vice President of the Vietnam Confederation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said that these figures showed the extraordinary efforts of Vietnamese enterprises to overcome difficulties. At the same time, this result also reflected the outstanding efforts of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the Ministry of Finance and other ministries and sectors in reforming administrative procedures and facilitating enterprises' import and export activities.

According to a representative of VCCI, the survey results show that businesses continue to expect ministries and sectors to make more efforts to improve the efficiency of the NSW Portal and speed up the reform of specialized inspection and management procedures to create commercial advantages for the business community.

Deputy Director of the Customs Reform and Modernization Board Luong Khanh Thiet said that with the drastic direction of the Government and the Prime Minister, along with the efforts of ministries, sectors, the specialized management and inspection of import and export goods has achieved many significant reforms and recognized by the business community.

Specifically, many legal documents on specialized management and inspection of imported and exported goods have been amended, supplemented, abolished or promulgated in the direction of reform and facilitating enterprises. In addition, ministries and sectors have initially applied the principle of risk management in specialized inspection activities at different levels and forms. Many ministries and sectors changed the time of conducting a quality inspection for imported goods from pre-inspection to post-audit. Many specialized inspection and management procedures are electronification. Many overlapping regulations in specialized inspection have also been removed. As a result, the percentage of shipments subject to inspection decreased in 2021.

In addition, to create a breakthrough in specialized inspection for import and export goods, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has advised the Ministry of Finance to submit to the Prime Minister for promulgation Decision No. 38/QD-TTg dated January 12 1, 2021, approved the project "Reforming the model of quality inspection and food safety inspection for imported goods". On that basis, from 2021 up to now, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has focused on developing and submitting to the Government a draft Decree stipulating the management mechanism, methods, order and procedures for state inspection of quality and state inspection of food safety for imported goods serves as the basis for implementing reform contents in Decision No. 38/QD-TTg.

The report on the satisfaction of enterprises with the implementation of new specialized management and inspection procedures published by VCCI in collaboration with the General Department of Vietnam Customs on November 3 clearly showed these results.

Typically, the assessment of enterprises on the impact of implementation on the time and cost of compliance with specialized inspection procedures. For example, with the cost level measured on a scale of 1-10, in terms of time, if applying the traditional method, the declaration of profile information is assessed at 5-5.04 points; receiving and processing dossiers is rated at 5-5.20 points, these two crucial stages are scored by enterprises with 3-3.25 points and 3-3.52 points if implemented on the NSW Portal. Similar to the cost, the declaration of profile information is rated at 4.48-5 points; receiving and processing dossiers at 4,91-5 points if applying the traditional method and reaching 2-3,1 points and 3-3.27 points if done on the NSW portal.

The survey conducted by VCCI and the General Department of Vietnam Customs related to specialized inspection also recorded some reflections from the business community. Most strongly support the efforts of the Ministry of Finance, especially the Customs sector, in reforming specialized inspection. However, according to the survey results, only 60% of enterprises are satisfied with the feedback from specialized management agencies. This number of enterprises suggested that ministries and sectors with specialized inspection procedures should cooperate with the focal agency, the General Department of Vietnam Customs, to build a mechanism of National Inquiry Point on customs procedures and a specialized inspection. In this mechanism, support personnel should include representatives of Customs and all relevant ministries and sectors.

The survey results also show that implementing a number of stages in specialized inspection activities through the NSW Portal helps reduce the time and cost mentioned above. Therefore, businesses want the implementation of NSW to be carried out faster and more thoroughly to simplify documents to be submitted and converted to digitized forms.