10 outstanding events of Customs in 2022

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Customs officers at Hon Gai port Customs Branch (Quang Ninh Customs Department). Photo: Quang Hung

Event 1: The Prime Minister approved the Customs Development Strategy for 2030 to build smart, professional, and modern Vietnam Customs.

On May 20, 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai signed Decision 628/QD-TTg approving the Customs development strategy to 2030.

The strategy defines general and specific objectives, ambitious targets and solutions to build and develop Vietnam Customs up to 2030. Accordingly, the overall objectives are "Building a professional and modern Vietnam Customs, on par with the Customs administrations of developed countries in the world, leading in the implementation of the Digital Government, with the Digital Customs and Smart Customs model; improving the quality of service to people and businesses; effectively manage tax collection for import and export activities; facilitating legal trade, tourism and transportation activities across borders, creating a transparent and fair import-export environment, contributing to improving national competitiveness; combating smuggling, trade fraud and illegal cross-border transportation of goods, contributing to ensuring social security and safety and protecting national interests and sovereignty".

In addition, the General Department of Customs issued a Plan for the digital transformation of the Customs sector up to 2025, vision to 2030 in Decision 707/QD-TCHQ dated May 4, 2022.

Event 2: Strengthening administrative reform, modernization, and trade facilitation, bringing Vietnam's import and export turnover to exceed US$700 billion while ensuring security, safety and anti-revenue loss

Customs officers of Quang Ngai Customs Department inspect goods at the port. Photo: Vietnam Customs

The encouraging growth rate after the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the efforts of the business community to overcome difficulties to stabilize production, maintain the market, and ensure the global supply chain; the drastic direction and management of the Government and the Prime Minister and the accompanying with businesses and people to remove difficulties for production and business activities, and especially the important contribution of the customs sector in supporting import and export enterprises, ensuring raw material sources and supply chain, as well as promoting administrative reform and accelerating customs clearance.

From the beginning of 2022, the General Department of Customs issued a plan to implement Resolution 01/NQ-CP dated January 8, 2022; Resolution 02/NQ-CP dated January 10, 2022, to promote reform of administrative procedures and Resolution 43/2022/QH15 dated January 11, 2022, on fiscal and monetary policies to support the P economic recovery and development program. In addition, the Director General of the Customs issued Directive 439/CT-TCHQ dated February 11, 2022, to enhance the efficiency of budget collection, which indicated general solutions and specific ones for each unit.

In addition to trade facilitation, the Customs sector has strengthened state management. Thus the Customs collected VND11,170 billion from anti-revenue loss in the first eleven months.

Event 3: The fight against the smuggling of banned goods achieved impressive results with 1 ton of seized drugs and 270 arrests.

In 2022, the Customs sector presided over and coordinated with the Police and Border Guard forces to handle 303 cases, arresting 270 suspects, seized 165 kg of heroin and 20 packages of heroin; 162 kg of Cannabis; 51 kg of opium; 668 kg and 6,624 tablets of synthetic drugs.

Hanoi Customs seized drugs hidden in confectionery packages and supplementary foods in November 2022. Photo: N.Linh

Event 4: Detecting many cases of trade fraud with great value of up to trillions of dong; prosecuting 48 cases, proposing other agencies to prosecute 141 cases, an increase of 23% year-on-year.

In 2022, smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeiting increased on border lines, sea areas and inland areas with new and more sophisticated methods and tricks.

As the standing agency of the 389 National Steering Committee of the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Customs has effectively advised the Ministry of Finance on coordination with other ministries and agencies to strengthen the fight against smuggling, trade fraud, counterfeit goods and illegal cross-border transportation of goods.

As an advisory agency to the leadership of the Ministry of Finance in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, the General Department of Customs has advised the Minister of Finance to assign the implementation of the National Action Plan in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the 2021-2025 period.

In 2022, Customs reported the results of implementing the Mekong Dragon 4 campaign and the contents to implement the Mekong Dragon 5 campaign. As a result, 2,820 drugs and CITES wildlife cases were handled, seizing more than 39 tons of drugs, more than 108 tons of precursors, 161 tons and more than 2,000 products from CITES (wood and plants). In addition, 2022 is also a successful year for the Customs sector in controlling smuggling and trade fraud of significant cases of cashew nuts worth trillions of dong.

As a result, from December 16, 2021, to December 15, 2022, the Customs chaired and worked with other agencies to handle 16,824 cases of violation, up by 15%, with the infringing goods estimated at VND 8,450 billion, up 211% year-on-year; contributing VND 459 billion to the State budget. In addition, customs authorities prosecuted 48 cases, up 23% year-on-year, and transferred 141 cases to other agencies.

Event 5: This is the sixth consecutive year the General Department of Customs has led administrative reform of the General Department and has always been at the top of the information technology readiness index.

A Customs officer of the Hoa Khanh-Lien Chieu Industrial Park Customs Branch guides procedures for the enterprise.

The General Department of Customs has been assessed by the Government, ministries, agencies and the business community as a leading agency in reform and modernization. Accordingly, under Decision No. 2154/QD-BTC dated October 25, 2022, of the Minister of Finance, 2021 is the sixth year in a row that the General Department of Customs is at the top of the General Department and the equivalent level under the Ministry of Finance in terms of administrative reform index.

Event 6: Import and export duty revenue exceeds the estimate, recording the highest result ever, and is expected to reach VND 440 trillion, VND 80 trillion and VND20 trillion higher than the assigned estimate and the ambitious target, respectively.

By December 20, 2022, the budget revenue from import-export activities reached VND 425,593 billion, exceeding 20.9% of the estimate and 1.3% of the ambitious target (VND 420,000 billion) VND), an increase of 13.95% over the same period last year. As a result, it is expected that the revenue for the whole year will hit VND440 trillion.

Customs officers of the HCM City Customs Department inspect imported and exported goods through Cat Lai port. Photo. T.H

Event 7: Providing solutions and tools to manage import and export goods by road through the E-manifest system for imported goods

Customs officers of Hanoi Customs Department at work. Photo: N. Linh

The system has outstanding advantages:

The system has been completed, and added several user support functions had brought many benefits, saving time, costs, paper documents, human resources, etc.

Customs declarant can submit their dossiers at any place with an internet connection. One declarant may declare for many manifests. The system automatically receives and returns the results to the declarant. The declarant may use the results and provide the manifest number/barcode to the customs office to confirm the goods are entering the border gate. The declarant is completely proactive in saving information, making additional declarations and amending declared contents before submitting the manifest to the system, and neither need to print the manifest to wait for the customs confirmation nor keep paper records.

For the Customs: the system automatically receives, checks and returns the results to the declarant, receives the manifest number/barcode, looks it up on the system and confirms the information and goods entering the territory on the system. This is a very important operation in the reform and modernization of the Customs sector, creating an electronic database to serve the Digital Customs System, smart customs for international land and river border gates.

The Customs will continue to introduce and train the system for businesses and Customs officers to ensure accurate and consistent implementation and meet management requirements, thereby improving the reform and modernization of customs operations towards digital and paperless customs.

Event 8: Signing the Declaration of Intent to expand cooperation between the General Department of Vietnam Customs and the US Customs and Border Protection.

Director General of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Van Can and High Commissioner Chris Magnus signed a Memorandum of Understanding on expanding cooperation between the General Department of Vietnam Customs and the US Customs and Border Protection. Photo: Dao Hai

To implement the Mutual Assistance Agreement between the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Government of the United States of America, effective from May 20, 2020, Director General of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Van Can had a visit to the US Customs from June 6 to 10, 2022 and a bilateral talk with the US Customs High Commissioner to discuss bilateral cooperation activities within the framework of the Mutual Assistance Agreement in the field of customs between Vietnam and the United States shortly. After the talk, the leaders of the two customs administrations signed the Declaration of Intent to expand cooperation.

The signing of the Declaration is expected to strongly promote the implementation of the signed Agreement and deepen the cooperation relationship between the two agencies, contributing to facilitating legal trade while ensuring trade and national security, and strengthening the capacity of customs authorities to detect and prevent customs violations, thereby further promoting bilateral economic and trade relations between the two countries.

Event 9: Promulgating and implementing a pilot program to support and encourage enterprises to voluntarily comply with customs laws; successfully organizing a Customs – Business Forum with the theme: "Vietnam Customs facilitates trade and logistics development" and honours "large and compliant taxpayers".

On July 15, 2022, the General Department of Customs issued Decision 1399/QD-TCHQ on the pilot program to support and encourage businesses to voluntarily comply with customs law.

Customs – Business Forum. Photo: Quang Hung

On September 8, the Customs-Business Forum took place with the theme: "Vietnam Customs facilitates trade and logistics development" and honours "large and compliant taxpayers ". This is a practical activity, showing the attention and companionship of the Customs sector for enterprises in facilitating trade and logistics development in Vietnam, Thereby recognizing, praising and honouring nine enterprises contributing large tax amount to the State budget and complying with the customs law, contributing to the country's economic development.

Event 10: Successfully organizing the Party Congress of 52 party units under the Party Committee of the General Department of Customs for the 2022-2025 term

To implement the Party's Regulations and the Central Government's regulations and guidelines on the organization of the Party cell congress for the term 2022 - 2025, on June 20, 2022, the Standing Board of the Party Committee of the General Department of Customs issued Guidance No. 334 -HD/DU on the organization of party congresses under the 2022 – 2025 term in the Party Committee of the General Department of Customs.

The Party congress is an important political activity of the Party cells and all Party members. From August 2, 2022 to October 11, 2022, 52 party cells under the Party Committee of the General Department of Customs held the party congress successfully.