Consulting, and answering legal issues on Customs News: Need maximum support from professional units

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Column interface "Consulting, answering the Customs laws". Photo: Customs news

Many professional units effectively coordinate with the Advisory Group of the Customs News to answer and consult questions of readers in the shortest possible time, which is highly appreciated by readers about the specific and accurate content in accordance with the law. However, to increase the effectiveness of task, in the future, it is necessary to have support from professional units.

Effective but still limited

After Decision No. 4260/2016/QD-TCHQ dated December 7, 2016 of the General Department of Customs promulgating the Regulation on consulting and answering legal issues on Customs News took effect and went into operation, Customs News developed the Implementation Plan quickly, and sent a letter requesting the units in the Customs provide the focal points to receive and return consultancy results as prescribed. The Customs News also established a group to implement the regulation (referred to as the Customs News’ Advisory Group), assigned members of the group to follow up, contact and urge the focal points in the units. The Customs News’ Advisory Group is responsible for being on duty, editing advisory content, answering on Customs Newspaper and administering and approving the posting of the question and answer content in the column "Consulting and answering the customs law" on Electronic Customs News (www.haiquanonline.com.vn).

In addition, Customs News acted as a contact point with units to transfer questions and receive answers and was ready to support enterprises connect with Customs units to respond quickly to problems surrounding customs procedures.

Through statistics for nearly three years in operation, consulting, and answering legal issues on Customs News received 588 questions from readers, about –one to two questions of readers were sent to the system each day. A total 393 questions were transferred to units to research and answer readers, 80 were answered by members of the Advisory Group of the Customs News, and 89 questions were answered and provided direct guidance for readers by the Advisory Group to send questions to specialised functional units.

Some questions of readers were researched and answered by the contact points of units in one working day. Most of the receiving points at the professional units grasped and divided the sentences of readers to the divisions to get answers to the Advisory Group of Customs News.

The results show consulting and answering legal issues on Customs News have brought high efficiency to help readers understand the provisions of the customs law to implement accurately and effectively; at the same time, contribute to removing obstacles and shortcomings in customs law and related regulations in actual activities. Through consulting and answering legal questions on Customs News, the Customs acknowledges the problems, opinions, and suggestions of enterprises, organisations and individuals to study, amend and improve the customs legal regulations, contributing to promoting administrative procedure reform, modernising Customs operation.

The consulting and answering legal issues on Customs News have shaped clearly and effectively, connected between the General Department of Customs and the business community, people being interested in Customs in general, and customs operations in particular, become one of the measures to propagate and disseminate laws and promptly remove obstacles for enterprises and people.

Although consulting and answering legal issues on Customs News has received close coordination of units under the General Department of Customs, some units have still not responded in time, consulting and answering contents have still been perfunctory to cope with the questions. Some units with stubborn attitudes did not coordinate in answering questions of readers which made this work difficult and lost the trust of the business community because of waiting for answers for a long time.

More support

In the trend of development and integration of the country and the requirements of tasks for the Customs, consulting and answering legal issues are always seen as urgent and transparent information needs. Therefore, in the future, the Advisory Group of Customs News will continue to enhance information on this content through consulting and answering legal issues for readers.

To implement propaganda of this content effectively, attract the attention of readers and ensure the guidelines and orientations of the Customs, with the efforts of the reporters and editors of Customs News, it is necessary to get support from the customs professional units under the General Department of Customs for the Advisory Group of Customs News

In particular, the focal points to receive questions and replies should actively update the registered email address to review, confirm, distribute and urge the professional units to complete response process in the specified time. They should coordinate closely with the Advisory Group of Customs News to deploy, or coordinate questions if any problems arise in the process of responding to readers.

In addition, the Advisory Group of Customs News also wishes to receive the attention and coordination of departments, bureaus, and units in the Customs in providing information to the Customs News for answer, and consult legal policies, contributing to creating propaganda in common.

In the future, the Advisory Group of Customs News will also strengthen the content of policy criticism and consult on customs law and regulations related to import and export activities. They will open the subject to readers to get more realistic questions.

In particular, Customs News (Advisory Group) will innovate, improve the quality of content and form of answering quickly and efficiently to build the position of Customs News in providing information and show is an effective means of support and advice on legal policies for readers, customs declarants and enterprises, deserving of being the official organ of the Customs in the integration trend, and information technology development.