Why are businesses not interested in receiving electronic results?

Result of solving procedures of bonded warehouses could be returned via online but enterprises refered to receive results in the form of paper. Photo: T.Bình

According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, for customs clearance procedures implemented through the VNACCS/VCIS system, the system has returned results to business completely electronically, namely the e-customs declaration.

For other online public services, enterprises might choose to receive results as a hard copy or soft copy. However, most businesses now choose to receive results in the form of paper. The reason is that if there was only one way to receive result by electronic version, it might cause difficult for enterprises carrying out subsequent procedures with other State management agencies.

For example, businesses can implement online procedures to set up bonded warehouses andcustoms authorities can return the decision in the form of online documents. But, when conducting subsequent procedures at a local authority, electronic decisions might not be accepted.

Regarding reality, enterprises have performed the online public service but they still have to present paper documents and voucher. According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, although implementing online public services, in some cases, it is still required to present paper dossiers and documents.

Specifically, when carrying out customs clearance procedures, if the customs declaration is classified to yellow and red channels by the risk management system, according to regulations, enterprises must present to the Customs authority paper documents in a customs dossier for inspection.

To reduce the presentation of paper documents of enterprises and follow the spirit of Resolution 19/2016/NQ-CP on reducing the rate of checking the yellow and red channels, the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Vietnam Customs are actively coordinating with ministries and sector in reforming specialised inspection work and intensifying application of risk management to increase the rate of cargo declaration in green channel.

Regarding the implementation of online public services of the Customs sector in general, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, to better serve the people and businesses and meet the requirements of implementing the Government's Resolutions on administrative procedures reform, promoting the application of information technology, especially Resolution No. 36a/NQ-CP on e-Government, in recent years, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has made a lot of efforts to provide online public services.

Updated to September 30, 2019, the General Department of Vietnam Customs had 172/192 administrative procedures in the field of customs (accounting for 90 percent) provided with online public services at levels 3 and 4, allowing people and businesses to apply and receive results via the internet. Of that, there are 163 procedures provided with online public service at level 4.

In the future, the General Department of Vietnam Customs will supplement online public services for a number of newly issued procedures, review and assess the procedures that are being provided with online public services at level 3 to consider to provide at level 4.

At the same time, actively preparing and complete the functions of the system, ready for integration and connection with the National Public Service Portal.