The tax and customs sectors have probably never taken such strong action as they are now to reform administrative procedures. After this message, delivered by the Prime Minister at a meeting with these two sectors in mid-July 2014, a series of policies and measures have been quickly adopted and implemented in order to create favourable conditions for enterprises to do business and boost national competitiveness.
After the customs sector deployed the automatic customs clearance project – a long stride in administrative procedure reform, the General Department of Vietnam Customs announced the official time for import and import clearance in September 2014 industry. According to the announcement, the customs clearance time for imported goods only accounts for 28 per cent of the total time, starting from the time of port entry to the time of making clearance decision while remaining 72 per cent of time will be use by professional agencies in charge of exporting and importing activities. With respect to exported goods, the time from registering clearance declaration (by companies) to making clearance decision (by customs authorities) is more than 11 hours.
Import and export procedures involve many agencies as well as supporting companies like warehouse, yard, port operators and logistics providers. Therefore, to reduce the time for export and import clearance, the Ministry of Finance recently proposed cooperation with 11 ministries to carry out some specific solutions together.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Finance proposed the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defence to review and issue the list of imports and the list of exports imposed to animal, plant and health quarantine; and toxic chemicals, pesticides, environment-polluting commodities. In case of examination for clearance, the ministries will arrange enough personnel and equipment for the job.
The Ministry of Finance also reminded the ministries to weigh on the list of goods imposed to examination before clearance to perform the job in the best manner. It already coordinated with the General Department of Vietnam Customs to encode the lists of exports and imports.
Regarding goods subject to State control and inspection of quality and food safety, the Ministry of Finance proposed ministries concerned to build, issue and announce national technical standards and criteria for goods subject to specialised examination; and review and issue the process of specialised examination to ensure the consistency of contents, documents, procedures and measures.
The ministries will publish the list of names and addresses of agencies in charge of specialised examination for customs offices and enterprises to follow. The 11 ministries will also consider risk management methods and measures like intensifying focused examination on commodities harmful to human health, social security and environment and deploying post-clearance specialised examination for goods with less harm and low risk.
Le Hien
Đăng ký: VietNam News