Ba Ria- Vung Tau Customs implements many solutions of increasing the budget revenue

Inspecting the import and export goods at the Cai Mep - Thi Vai port. Photo: Nguyen Hue.

According to the Customs Department of BR-VT, by March 15th, 2017, the budget revenue collection of the unit reached 3,359 billion VND, achieved 19.3% as compared to the assigned target, an increase of 87% over the same period of 2016. The Customs Department of BR-VT said that the revenue collection increased in the first quarter because the revenue from key export-import items increased over the same period. In particular, the revenue from export crude oil reached 784 billion VND, up about 71.2%.

The reason was the oil price increased again, so the revenue from this commodity also increased (in the first quarter of 2017, the export crude oil price reached $US 58/barrel, up 65.7% over the same period in 2016), the export turnover of crude oil reached $US 554 million in the first quarter USD, up 52.3% compared with the first quarter of 2016.

Due to the effect of the crude oil price, the import turnover of petroleum products in the first months of the year increased over the same period, leading to the increase of the collected tax revenue. By the end of March 15th, revenue of crude oil reached about 163 billion, up 117.3%; revenue of the imported cars reached about 778 billion VND, up 15 times compared with the same period of last year (50 billion VND).

The import turnover of steel products reached about 332 million VND, up 54.4%, the tax collection reached about 331 billion VND, up 31% over the same period. The import turnover of liquefied petroleum gas reached $US 71.4 million, an increase of 35.2%; Tax collection reached 154 billion VND, up 63.8%, compared with the same period in 2016.

Although revenue in the first quarter increased quite highly, however, according to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Sang, the Deputy Director of the Customs Department of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province, the revenue collection of the unit will not be positive in 2017 due to influence from the reduction of import duty of FTAs that has come into effect.

Besides, the number of imported cars on Cai Mep ports is expected to decrease because the enterprises have to compete with imported cars from other countries. It is estimated that the amount of tax collection from imported cars is only about 1,600 billion VND in 2017, down about 2.700 billion VND compared with 2016.

In addition, due to the unstable price of exported crude oil, oil, and gas exploration, exploitation activities of the enterprises in the area is not expected. In the first quarter of 2017, the production of crude oil exploitation only reached 1.2 million tons, down 8.5% over the same period in 2016.

In 2017, the Customs Department of BR-VT was assigned the budget revenue estimate of 17,350 billion VND by the Ministry of Finance, up 5% over the actual revenue in 2016; The General Department of Customs assigned target of 17,450 billion VND, an increase of nearly 6% compared to the actual revenue in 2016.

In order to achieve the assigned budget revenue, the Customs Department of BR-VT has to collect about an average of 1,455 billion VND per month. However, the revenue in the first 2 months of 2017 only reached 2,352 billion VND (an average of 1,176 billion VND per month), lack of about 560 billion VND. From now to the end of the year, the Customs Department of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province has to collect about 15,100 billion VND, an average of 1,510 billion VND per month.

The revenue collection of the Customs Department of Ba Ria-Vung Tau comes from exported crude oil, imported cars, iron, and steel mainly, accounting for over 60% of the total revenue. However, the expected revenue from cars will fall sharply in 2017, only about 1,600 billion VND, down about 2.700 billion VND compared to 2016. The crude oil price in 2017 is expected to increase compared with 2016 but the revenue of this item is expected to reach about 3,700 billion VND, an increase of about 400 billion VND compared to 2016.

From the above situation, the Customs Department of BR-VT said that it was extremely difficult and challenging to complete the budget revenue target in 2017 for the unit. To strive to complete the budget collection target, in addition to the guidance implementation of the General Department of Customs in Directive 1193/CT-TCHQ, the Customs Department of BR-VT required its units to concentrate on implementing solutions to increase revenue collection and reduce losses such as: creating favorable conditions for the enterprises to participate in export-import activities.

Specifically, they set up a team to solve quickly daily problems of the enterprises at locations of the customs procedures take the initiative in meeting the enterprises and solve the arisen problems in the competence related to the customs procedures, the tax policies, the tax administration, the accounting, the liquidity, the tax refund and the tax exemption.

They plan to prepare and organize the dialogue meetings with the enterprises that export and import through the seaports in the management areas, but fail to register declarations at their units, those enterprises carry out the procedures for border gate transfer to the other Customs Departments, so that, they grasp the difficulties and problems of the enterprises. Since then, the unit continues to promote the mobilization of the enterprises to carry out the customs procedures at the unit for contributing to increased budget revenues.

Along with creating maximum convenience for the enterprises to carry out the customs procedures at the unit, the Customs Department of BR-VT also deploy solutions drastically to prevent the revenue losses such as: focusing on reviewing and grasping the situation of tax debts, classifying the debt groups, assessing each debt of each enterprise in detail, finding out the actual situation of the enterprises, thence, to take drastic, continuous, regular measures for recovering the maximum amount of arisen tax; Strengthening the inspection on cases of tax reduction, tax refund, non-tax collection.

Coordinating with the Tax offices to compensate the amount of value added tax; Strengthening the post-clearance inspection, the inspection, and the internal inspection; the Control, anti-smuggling, trade fraud and the risk management... to prevent the budget losses.