Recently, the Draft Amended Customs Law was officially submitted to the Vietnam National Assembly for consideration and comments. According to the experts, if the Amended Customs Law is passed, it would be a major milestone for customs administration.
In the proposal for the project of Amended Customs Law, the main focus of the Amended Customs Law is placed on a comprehensive reform in customs operations by facilitating a good environment to adopt the modern customs management model in line with the international practices to contribute to protecting the interests of sovereignty and national security and to attracting the foreign investment, improving the domestic and international competitiveness of the businesses and promoting the economic growth.
Internal codification of the international treaties
Therefore, the Amended Customs Law is built on the basis of summarising and evaluating the results of the 11- year implementation of the Customs Law 2001 and the Law on the Amendment of and Addition to a number of articles of the Customs Law 2006 and reviewed from the lessons of the successes and shortcomings to determine the causes as a basis of building the amended law.
Notably, the reform and modernisation of the customs procedures and customs administration, the draft has radically changed the model of the customs procedures, from the traditional model to the electronic model. To synchronise with the regulations on the electronic customs procedures, the draft Amended Customs Law has an addition to the articles related to the customs procedures for different types of public goods, imports for the manufacturing to export, processing, and some kind of temporary exports and temporary imports to ensure the transparency and effective implementation of the application of information technology to modernise the customs administration and reform the administrative procedures in the field of customs.
In addition, the new law clearly specifies the deadline for the customs officers to check the latest records within 2 hours of work, reducing the time to check the actual goods to 8 hours from the time of the declaration of the Certificate of Origins of the goods to the customs office (on the basis of the adoption of the container cargo scanners) and the necessary period extended not more than two working days and providing the additional mechanisms to predetermine the number, origins, and customs valuation law as a basis for the customs authorities to facilitate the trade and help businesses proactively identify before the tax obligations for each imported goods are expected.
Improving the efficiency of customs administration
Along with the trade facilitation, the draft Customs Law focuses on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the customs administration and strengthening the protection of the interests and the national sovereignty and economic security to prevent the smuggling and illegal transportation of goods across borders and trade fraud.
Specifically, the draft Law regulates the forces of the customs authority to trace and follow up on cases in which there is evidence to determine the goods and transportation to be the smuggling and illegal transportation cross the borders from the area of the customs operations and out of the area of the customs operations and adopt the specific measures for patrols, control, investigation and verification to help the customs offices use as basis to take action.
Mr Vu Ngoc Anh, Deputy General Director of Customs, said: Functions, duties and powers of the customs authorities in each country are different and dependent on the legal systems of the countries. However, in the context of Vietnam’s deeper integration into the world and regional economies, the customs procedures become simpler but the workload of the Customs has increased drastically and the smuggling and frauds are becoming sophisticated and closely related to the foreign impacts; therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the authorities of the customs offices and officers. With the current provisions of the Customs Law and the content added to the draft Customs Law (on Amendment), the functions and duties of the customs authority in Vietnam is extended to those of other customs authorities in other countries.
According to Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung, along with the reform of working methods, the organizational structure reform is needed as well. The Draft Customs Law was amended and a chapter added, which regulates the duties and organisational structure of the customs authority as well as specifies the customs duties, organisational principles and customs operations, organisational system, and other regulations related to the customs officials.
Under the draft, the organisational system includes Vietnam General Department of Customs, departments of Customs, Customs Inspection Teams and other equivalent units. This organisational system is developed based on the scale and nature of the import-export activities, specific geography, social and economic conditions, regulatory requirements of the customs rather than the administrative boundaries. There will be provincial departments of customs and departments responsible for the customs supervision of several provinces.
The Vietnam National Assembly will discuss the Draft Customs Law on November 16.
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Đăng ký: VietNam News