Plant quarantine of export-import goods: check 100%

Operation at Region I plant Quarantine Sub-division (Hai Phong). Picture: T.Binh.

No check proportionally

According to Decision No. 2515/2015/QD-BNNPTNT of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on the HS Code List of Vietnam's list of articles subject to plant quarantine, the quantity of export and import goods subject to inspection now includes hundreds of different items, from vegetables, roots, flowers, to some insect species.

Talking to reporters of the Customs Newspaper, Mr. Le Son Ha - Head of Plant Quarantine Division (Department of Plant Protection, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) said: According to current legislation in the field of Plant protection, 100% of import and export goods included in the list of Decision 2515 must be inspected and the Quarantine Agency does not carry out a proportional or probable inspection.

It is known that in the regulations of the Law on Plant Protection and Quarantine, within 24 hours from the start of the quarantine, if the plant quarantine requirements are met, the specialized plant protection and quarantine agencies will issue phytosanitary certificates. In cases where it is longer than 24 hours due to technical requirements or if the phytosanitary certificates are not granted, plant protection and quarantine agencies shall notify or reply in writing and clearly state the reason for the owner of the plant quarantine object.

According to Mr. Le Son Ha, according to the law, phytosanitary certificates have to be issued within a maximum of 24 hours. But now, the Plant Protection Department directs the Plant Quarantine Sub-Departments to issue certificates within no more than 4 hours by air and land, and not exceeding 10 hours by sea.

Thus, although the time has decreased according to the direction of the Plant Protection Department, with hundreds of thousands of imports and exports such as corn, soybean, apples, pears, oranges, tangerines etc. released annually through Customs, plant quarantine consumes a lot of time.

Why does the Quarantine Authority not check proportionally, or probably, or recognize the test results with the appropriate authorities to minimize the time for the business?

In response to our concerns, Mr. Le Son Ha explained: According to domestic law and international practice, goods on the list of plant quarantine cannot be tested proportionally but to inspect 100% for import and export shipments as mentioned above. On the other hand, the recognition of mutual results in the field of quarantine is practically nonexistent, as this is a unique area unlike quality or food safety testing (that can be mutual recognition among countries).

The leader of the plant quarantine Division said that in 2016, of the hundreds of thousands of shipments inspected by the Quarantine Agency, about 30% of the consignments detected pests, of which 138 shipments were infected with plant quarantine objects of Vietnam (subject to being banned into Vietnam in any form), and were destroyed.

The total quantity of 138 consignments infected with plant quarantine in Vietnam was about 21,000 tons, involving some commodities such as corn flakes, groundnuts, cotton, fruits etc. from countries and territories such as the United States, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Thailand etc.

Difficult to shorten time

At present, the Plant Protection Department has 9 quarantine sub-departments which carry out quarantine in the whole country with about 300 staff. With hundreds of thousands of shipments subject to inspection per year and increasing, will the plant quarantine agency have enough manpower to do so? Especially to be able to reduce the operating time of the quarantine agency, contributing to reduce the clearance time of goods under the direction of the Government?

In this regard, Mr. Le Son Ha said that the current quarantine agencies are meeting the requirements of the task. However, with the increase in the number of goods in the coming time, the human resource problem will be a big challenge.

Clearly, in order to reduce the time required for Customs clearance of goods under the direction of the Government, quarantine agencies must continue to review the quantity of quarantine items; at the same time, to enhance the application of modern technical means and equipment; strengthen the work of training to improve the level of quarantine staff, and so on.