Specialized inspections: Overlapping procedures and manual operations

	Prime Minister urged to reduce specialized inspections
	The Ministry of Industry and Trade agreed to reduce the specialized inspections
	Specialized inspections are still great barriers

Customs operations at the Customs Branch of Express Cargo (Hanoi). Photo: Ngoc Linh.

This was the reality raised at the meeting on inspections of 11 ministries and sectors on the reform of specialized inspection activities for imports and exports by the Prime Minister's working group on the morning of 21st August 2017.

According to the Government’s Portal, at the meeting, the Minister, Head of the Office of the Government, Mr. Mai Tien Dung said that the proportion of imports and exports subject to specialized inspections at the Customs clearance was up to 30- 35% and it would be reduced to 15% according to Resolution 19 of the Government.

The rate of imported and exported goods subject to veterinary inspections was 14.3%, quality control was 25.3%, food safety inspection was 19.1%, the export license was 41, 2%.

Also at the meeting, the Central Institute for Economic Management said that there were about 100,000 items subject to specialized inspections. Every year, enterprises have to pay 28.6 million working days and 14,300 billion VND for specialized inspections.

Therefore, in Resolution 19-2016 / NQ-CP, the Government has identified the need for comprehensive reform of sectoral management and control, assigning 3 general missions to ministries and assigning 8 missions to each ministry. The ministries have completed 3 missions.

According to Decision 2026, the Prime Minister also assigned the Ministries to amend and supplement 87 documents. At present, 60 documents have been reviewed, 56 of them have been amended and supplemented, and 4 of them have not been amended or supplemented.

In addition, according to Minister, Head of the Office of the Government, Mr. Mai Tien Dung, there are still many overlapping procedures. In the number of goods subject to specialized inspections, there were up to 58% of them to be performed 2-3 test procedures, increasing costs for businesses.

In particular, the head of the working group stated that many ministries still had a monopoly in conformity assessment. The inspections were still in manual form, the communication between the information technology agencies was limited without applying risk management. The number of inspections was high but the detection rate was very low, only 0.1%.

"A chocolate product needs 13 licenses; 12 ingredients need 12 licenses and final confirmation of final product. Yogurt is quarantined by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and subject to food safety inspections under the Ministry of Health. Silkworms and sunflower seeds are subject to inspections of 2 ministries. There were many practical issues like that, so we have to deal with", Minister Mai Tien Dung said.

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Therefore, Minister Mai Tien Dung said that after this meeting, the Ministry would review each Ministry, determine the total number of assigned tasks, the number of accomplished tasks, the number of uncompleted tasks to explain in detail. The working group will control each procedure and clarify the shortcomings as well as difficulty and obstacles.