Changes in Customs Statistics – Questions Raised

Statistics of imports and exports by the General Department of Customs have received a lot of concern raised by the business community and the media. Photo: T.Binh.

According to a recent explanation by the General Department of Customs, the cause of the gaps derived from the fact that the time to produce statistics was also the time of declaration accepted by Customs. This is the time when a periodic statistics report is preliminarily prepared. However, there may be amended declarations, deletion of declarations or false declarations...right after the time when the preliminarily periodic statistics report is completed. Therefore, periodic statistics reports may not match monthly statistics reports.

Preliminary import and export charts and tables published by the General Department of Customs monthly are statistics that can be updated. Changes in statistics are reflected in the status of charts and tables with the signs “Adjusted”, “Official” every 6 months (details can be seen in the Schedule of import and export statistics publication issued by the General Department of Customs annually on the Portal of the General Department of Customs at the address www.customs.gov.vn).

In the light of the Schedule, on September 23, 2016, the General Department of Customs will publicly make adjusted preliminary published statistics of the first 6 months of the year 2016. Customs statistics have 3 kinds of status: preliminary, adjusted and official.

Why Customs statistics vary? VCN- Recently, there have been a number of inquiries from organizations and individuals using Customs statistics about ...

“Hence, whenever official statistics of periods are collected and summed up, the statistics report of a longer period can be matched” explained the General Department of Customs.

The General Department of Customs added that adjustment of Customs statistics on imports and exports was an ordinary technique that was an integral part of the statistic process.

The technique is recommended by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and international statistics organizations for a transparent statistics process. This sort of statistics technique is also regulated in details in the Decision No. 2474/QD-TCHQ dated December 11, 2012 on the Regulations on adjusted imports and exports statistics publication” by the General Department of Customs.