There is a shift in smuggling through transit and transshipment goods

	Synchronously fighting against cigarette smuggling from border gate to the inland
	Concerning for counterfeit goods
	Long An: consignment for cigarette smuggling

There were more than 80 pockets of smuggled pangolins’scales that were detected in transit consignment by Customs force of Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: T.H

Controlling tightly from the border

According to the 389 Steering Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, in the past time, the functional units of the city, such as the Border Guard Command, police, market management has intensified patrol, scouting, grasping the situation for determining the capital, lines, groups, complex locations in order to control and prevent taking advantage of the policy of transit, and transshipment goods. Intensifying the control in order to promptly prevent, detect and handle acts of storing and transporting illegally imported goods; coordinating with the customs force in preventing, detecting, investigating and handling such smuggling activities.

The Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City has strengthened the inspection and strict control of shipments in transit, transshipment right at the import stage until the actual export. For lots of goods which have detected signs of violation, they must be inspected and strictly handled according to the provisions of law.

In the first 10 months of 2018, the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City has discovered twelve cases of transit importing late for doing procedures; six cases of wrong declaration of goods' names and incorrect origin; five groups belonging to licensed goods and one prohibited import of Annex I goods The Cites Convention, and seized 87 bags containing approximately 3,294 kg of pangolins’ scales that were concealed at the end of the container hidden behind a bag of cashew nuts to avoid detection.

Assessing the operation of transshipment and transit of goods and the situation of taking advantage of transshipment and transit of goods to breach customs law, the 389 Steering Committee of Ho Chi Minh City assess that at the border gates of the cities’ area there are a large volume of import and export goods, enterprises registered for many types of customs procedures, including in transit, transition, temporary import and re-export in large quantities, and various items. Accordingly, there are items with high tax rates, not encouraged to import such as: grocery, wine, cigarettes, cigars, cosmetics, cell phones, air conditioners, scraps ...

Commodities mainly include consumer goods, construction materials, garment accessories, clothing, food, bicycles and spare parts for bicycles and petrol (temporarily imported for re-export goods); Exporting and importing to and from port of Tan cang-Cai mep (Ba ria – Vung tau) with Cat Lai port.

For transit activities, enterprises often take advantage of ventilation, simple declaration, that are unaffected by tax policy and not adjusted by specialized management policies ... to import prohibited goods and importing goods into Vietnam or seeking to bring back goods into Vietnam through the trails, border crossings.

Smuggling redirects

In particular, the Steering Committee 389 Ho Chi Minh City assess that the smugglers tend to move from the import type of business, into the transit and transshipment type (register independent transport declarations) to exploit for smuggling and fraud, with common tricks including: Taking advantage of the exemption from inspection of the actual goods in transit, enterprises declare that goods are in transit in general but in fact are goods in transit requiring a permit from the competent authorities; counterfeit goods, intellectual property infringing goods. Taking advantage of the declaration of transit goods does not require a full declaration of details, so smugglers only declare the goods have a high value in the total value of the lot ... they do not declare the transit goods must have a permit.

Some enterprises take advantage of regulations on self-management and self-transportation of goods in transit through land border gates for domestic consumption for tax evasion. For shipments of goods that have just been come out of port, businesses find ways to remove the goods, then transport to the border to the Customs force of the arrival place to get confirmation in the system, and there are some enterprises after removing the goods, not transporting goods to the border gate. When they are verified at the business addresses of the shipping companies, they do not operate at this address.

The original consignee according to the declaration on the manifest is an enterprise in Vietnam, when customs offices or other functional forces detect that goods lots show signs of violating the customs legislation, they request the enterprise to coordinate for inspection, but the enterprise does not come to do the procedure, then they adjust the consignee in Cambodia and other countries to do procedures for transit of the shipment.

For transited shipments of conditional import goods or goods banned from importation, after the consignment is removed from the territory of Vietnam, enterprises shall seek to import them back into Vietnam in various modes such as breaking down shipments to Vietnam via trails, openings or enterprises to open declarations, taking advantage of the separation of inspection exemptions for re-import of Vietnam.

HCMC request to supervise strictly transit and transhipment goods VCN – Facing with the fact that the people take advantage of transit and transshipment to smuggling ...

In order to achieve effective control of transshipment and transit services, the 389 Steering Committee of HCM City recommended that the surveillance system for cargo and transit vehicles by seals should be implemented soon to prevent and detect acts of smuggling or banned goods on the domestic market of Vietnam.

Along with that, management of issuing the license of goods to be subject to transit permits of the Ministry of Industry and Trade on the National Single Window for convenient comparison. At the same time, increasing the level of penalties for violations of transit goods as a deterent.