Receiving comments from authorised economic operators

	68 Authorized Economic Operators in import – export activities
	Authorized economic operators accounts for 34.4% of the country’s total import and export turnover
	Authorized economic operators are exempted from post clearance audit at customs office

Enterprises’ staff talk with experts outside the seminar. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Revising many contents

At the seminar, a representative of the Customs Control and Supervision Department summarised nine contents to be revised of the above two circulars. These contents are related to the regulations on export processing and production and processing on actual production norms; notification of production establishments, sales contracts; settlement report; procedures for handling waste, scrap and defective products; procedures for transferring raw materials and supplies from customs regime of processing into export production; lease of warehouses of export processing enterprises; procedures for on the spot import and export goods

He said the above proposed amendments and supplements aim to resolve problems arising in the implementation of enterprises, creating more favourable conditions for production and import-export activities of enterprises, especially authorised economic operators.

Former Deputy Director General of the Customs, expert of the USAID’s Trade Facilitation Project of USAID Vu Ngoc Anh also said amendments to regimes and policies for import and export activities of enterprises should be based on the Government’s resolutions and the Prime Minister's direction on improving the business and investment environment and improving national competitiveness.

Besides, it is also necessary to base on change of business and investment environment and business community. The business community is now very different from 10 years ago. Most authorised economic operators have at least 10 years of operation and their information is managed by the Customs sector, the amendments to administrative procedures, forms and vouchers are very important.

Vu Ngoc Anh said if only a few priorities are given to authorised economic operators, it will not help them much, it needs appropriate management to facilitate them.

For problems arising from the reality of authorised economic operators related to export processing and processing, Anh suggested: For the management of actual production norms, each enterprises have different management processes, models and fields, if they are required to build their own information technology system to adapt to the customs office, there will be many problems on information storage and change of the system and costs for operation, maintenance of the system.

In addition, according to Anh, many regulations and procedures need to be reviewed to unify the understanding between Customs and enterprises. For on-the-spot import and export regulations, if on-the-spot import and export activity is implemented as normal import and export activity, it will take time and is not necessary because this activity still occurs only in the territory of Vietnam.

For scrap handling, this must be handled every day, even every hour. The announcement of export contracts makes it difficult for not only fishery enterprises but also agricultural firms. Therefore, all these regulations must be carefully reviewed to benefit both customs and enterprises.

An enterprise’s representative speaks at the seminar. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Comments from enterprises

At the seminar, representatives of authorised economic operators also proposed amendments and supplements to regulations on export processing and production to facilitate them.

According to a representative of Intel Company, the warehouse outsourcing of export processing enterprises is facing difficulties because the goods are stored by the company not only raw materials but also machinery and equipment, according to regulations, the company is not allowed to store fixed asset, so it does not know whether it is allowed to put the machinery and equipment into the warehouse or not.

According to a representative of Pouchen Group, outsourcing is indispensable for most textile and footwear enterprises because one enterprise cannot invest in the whole production line. Therefore there is at least one stage requesting for outsourcing, if taxing on this will be difficult for enterprises. For on-the-spot exports, due to a lack of agreement between the exporter and the importer, the suspension of declarations is very common, causing many difficulties for enterprises.

In this regard, the representative of the Customs Control and Supervision Department said when carrying out the import and export procedures for on-the-sport import and export activities, a lot of criteria are declared wrongly, causing suspension of declarations. This raises the need to design a system to limit errors; currently the General Department of Customs is also studying this.

According to Canon Vietnam Company, after Circular 39 comes into effect, collecting goods from its subsidiaries is difficult and expensive, hampering production and business activities. The company propose to amend this regulation.

The representative of the Customs Control and Supervision Department said that to amend and supplement the above regulations, it is necessary to review the legislation on technical conditions for deploying the automated supervision system. Therefore, there are many regulations the Customs agency wants to amend to facilitate enterprises but it is not easy to implement for automated customs management.

Regarding export processing enterprises, a company in Binh Duong proposed clearer regulations to allow domestic enterprises. As a partner of an authorised economic operator allowed to open declaration one time and is not subject to inspection, but currently an export processing enterprise hires a domestic enterprises to process finished products, but the domestic enterprise has to open declarations many times and are subject to inspection while the amount of goods processed for exports is remarkable, leading to taking a lot of time for import procedures and inspection, affecting delivery between the two parties, resulting in costs

In addition, this company said the notification of export contracts must provide specific requirements on information because there are many forms of contracts.

The representative of the Department of Customs Management Supervision acknowledged the comments to amend the circulars so that they can cover all cases and avoid problems in implementation.

Deputy Director General Hoang Viet Cuong received South Korea Customs

In addition to the above comments, the representative of the General Department of Customs also received comments from other enterprises related to the handling of scrap, defective products, settlement report, raw material management, authorised inspection, cancellation of declarations and many other issues.