Building a digital border gate in association with Smart Customs

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Import and export activities at Cha Lo International Border Gate, Quang Binh. Photo: Quang Hung

Ensuring facilities and infrastructure

According to the Ministry of Finance, some border gates are suffering from a lack of infrastructure and techniques. Some border gates have neither permanent working houses for state management agencies; nor land area for the construction of the customs office and places for gathering, inspection and supervision of imported and exported goods.

Therefore, when trucks carrying goods arrive, the customs must take advantage of the vacant land at the border gate to supervise the transshipment of goods, making the trucks have to wait in long queues along the border gate area to wait for immigration procedures and customs clearance. Notably, some border gate areas bordering Laos and Cambodia currently have narrow road surfaces, sharp turns, only one lane traffic, while trucks have a large tonnage, leading to congestion and slow moving and potential risk of traffic insecurity. The lack of technical infrastructure conditions leads to delays in customs clearance.

Therefore, the Ministry of Finance has proposed that the local authorities must when implementing border gate planning must arrange combined working areas of the state management agencies at the border gate; areas for warehouses and yards to serve the gathering, inspection and supervision of imported and exported goods at land border gates; arrange land in the border gate area to ensure conditions for customs inspection and supervision to meet the State management of customs and facilitate.

In addition, the local authorities are required to arrange locations for installation of technical equipment of the Customs at the border gate area, meeting the requirements of customs inspection and supervision, serving the management of import and export goods, means of entry and exit, and to prevent, stop and fight against smuggling, trade fraud and illegal cross-border goods transportation.

Build a digital border gate model in association with Smart Customs

In addition to the border gate planning, the Ministry of Finance also recommended the provinces to deploy the digital border gate model.

Currently, a number of border provinces have been developing plans of construction of digital and smart border gate platform models. However, the digital border gate platforms are built by some localities themselves according to the purposes and management needs of the local governments, so when the digital border gate platforms are deployed, there is an overlap between systems, processes, procedures prescribed by the customs law and the regulations of other state management agencies at border gate area.

Meanwhile, according to the provisions of the Customs Law, within the customs operation area, the customs authority is responsible for inspecting, supervising and controlling goods and means of transport and handling violations of customs laws in accordance with Vietnamese law, international treaties to which Vietnam is a contracting party, and systems, processes and procedures prescribed by customs law for uniform application at all border gates nationwide.

In this regard, in Decision 628/QD-TTg dated May 20, 2022, the Prime Minister also approved the Customs Development Strategy by 2030, which sets out a target by 2030 "100% key international ports and border gates are equipped with automatic cargo management and supervision systems, equipped with cargo and baggage screening systems, camera monitoring systems and supporting devices in customs inspection and supervision” and “100% of land border gates deploy a system to receive and process declared information about imported and exported goods before vehicles move across the border”.

At the same time, Decision 628 also stipulates that “the physical inspection, supervision of goods, monitoring and management of import activities shall be assigned to the border gate customs branches or the local customs branches managing areas where the enterprise has a production facility”.

Currently, the Ministry of Information and Communications is also consulting ministries and central agencies to amend and supplement Decision No. 186/QD BTTTT dated February 11, 2022 of the Minister of Information and Communications on approving the the program to promote the development and use of national digital platforms for digital transformation, developing digital government, digital economy and digital society. Accordingly, basing on the existing digital platforms, the Ministry of Information and Communications is drafting additional platforms, including a digital border gate platform, and the Ministry is expecting to assign the Ministry of Finance as the governing agencies and the General Department of Customs as the focal point in charge of implementation.

The Ministry of Finance said that the ministry is assigning the General Department of Customs to develop a Smart Customs Project, in which "The management model of import and export goods and means of entry and exit through land border gates" is a part of this project. This model ensures the consistency of the management and supervision of imported and exported goods and means of entry and exit from the time they enter Vietnam until they go through customs procedures for actual import or export.

Digital transformation - foundation to build a smart and modern Customs, Director General of Customs Nguyen Van Can

Customs processing, inspection, supervision and decision on customs clearance of goods are done by the Customs. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance proposes border provinces when making local digital border gate planning must discuss with the Customs in the overall design of the customs inspection and supervision model for goods exported and imported through the land border gate, ensuring the comprehensiveness, consistency and apply modern technology and equipment suitable to the specific realities of each group of land border gates, in the overall Digital Customs, Smart Customs, vision and orientation to 2030.