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Nghe An Custom Officers supported enterprises in legal procedures. Photo: H. Nu

Innovating the implementation method

The dialogue on policies and administrative procedures related to tax and Customs, which is jointly organized by the Ministry of Finance in cooperation with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) every year has become an important and effective channel of information exchange, helping the Taxation and Customs to grasp obstacles of enterprises in the implementation of the tax and Customs policies in a timely fashion, thereby issuing solutions to support the business community better. Annual dialogues have brought actual benefits to both management agencies and enterprises so that they have been highly appreciated by the business community.

Previously, enterprises had to wait for the business meetings to submit their questions to the State agencies for discussion and response. However, in recent years, the Ministry of Finance has changed the method of receiving questions of enterprises, synthesizing to give the answers on the problems mentioned by answering directly or in the document for enterprises to understand the implementation. With this method, instead of being confused by the unsystematic questions and answer, the incompatibility between questions and answers in previous time, now the state management agencies and enterprises can talk and share with each other more and more.

Drawing experiences from the meetings, the state management agencies mainly focused on organization and preparation of content rather than what enterprises want, but recently, the Customs and Taxation have concentrated on removing problems on policies for enterprises.

Moreover, the content has been more specific and logical. Besides propagating new and amended tax and Customs policies, the Ministry of Finance will suggest the key contents to enterprises to grasp and present their problems on the policies, procedures, customers’ service attitude of Customs and Tax officers.

As recognized by the reporter, most of the recent dialogue sessions took place in an atmosphere of openness, frankness, and communication. Many problems of enterprises have been removed thoroughly by the leaders of Ministry of Finance and relevant departments. The cooperation between the Ministry of Finance in general, the Taxation and the Customs in particular with the business community is getting closer.

According to the representative of the Legal Department under the GDVC, to promote the achieved results of reforms, in recent years, the Ministry of Finance has resolutely guide to change into a new management mechanism, mainly providing information and support services. The Customs has also paid great attention to educate and train discipline and professional ethics - a problem that many enterprises have not felt satisfied in communication with Customs officers. The Customs has gradually changed from manual management to electronic management, which is the core, closely follows the international standards and fundamentally changes the Customs management method. The electronic management has partly made a clear change in the service behavior and attitude of the majority of Customs officers, that is considering enterprises as partners, so all Customs officers must understand and share difficulties with enterprises.

Improving the service quality

The representative of Legal Department said that the change of working process has received many significant results but the Customs has still met difficulties due to lack of understanding of policies and law of many enterprises, leading to errors and violations in the implementation of the State’s policies. Facing this situation, the Customs has developed orientations in the coming time to better support the development of enterprises.

The representative also noted that some policies related to the Customs would be amended and supplemented to provide maximum facilitation to enterprises. Thus, enterprises should clearly study the Customs Law, Law on Import-Export Duties and related regulations when implementing Customs procedures. And declaring problems promptly, honestly in accordance with the law to the Customs authorities and taking responsibilities for their declarations.

At the same time, in order the next dialogue sessions to achieve better results, the exchange and interaction between enterprises and the Customs authorities also need to be further strengthened to help enterprises understand the Customs procedures and legal documents related to Customs operations, import and export activities and to help the Customs authorities grasp the difficulties of enterprises to solve in a timely manner.

He also added that in the immediate and long-term, the Customs always determined that law dissemination and support was an important and indispensable task of the Customs reform and modernization in particular and of administrative reform in general. The law dissemination and support would be implemented in appropriate forms and method, ensuring the timeliness, publicity, transparency, and clarity.

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The Customs will continue to study, consider and innovate the method of law dissemination and support, focusing on practical, economical but effective methods such as direct dialogue, enhancing the role of IT (via websites and telephones..). Proactively developing a data system to search legal documents and administrative procedures according to subjects, import-export Customs regime and each specialized operation on the website system, electronic tools, newspapers, magazines, publications, and leaflets.