Customs brokers have not made use of rights and ability

	Strictly managing the operation of Customs brokerage agents
	Customs brokers: Crowed but not strong
	Customs brokers need to be enjoyed remarkable preferential policies

Customs brokers hope to be enjoined more incentive. Photo: T.H

Named on declarations is still few

According to Customs Control and Supervision Division (Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department), currently, 372 businesses in Ho Chi Minh City have been certified as Customs brokers. Although the quantity of Customs brokers has significantly increased over the past time, their operation for Customs brokers still shows shortcomings and has not yet developed and been operated effectively for them to make use of their rights as a Customs broker. Currently, the quantity of declarations that have been signed and sealed is not high, accounting for an average of less than 10% of total import and export declarations. Meanwhile, in developed countries, the quantity of declarations signed and sealed by Customs broker accounts for 80%. If evaluating the declarations with the role of Customs brokers to help goods owners prepare information for import and export declaration, this rate in Vietnam reaches up to 80% of total import and export declarations.

Although Circular 12/2015/TT-BTC of the Ministry of Finance specifying rights and obligation of Customs Brokers, many of these businesses have not yet fully complied with their right and obligation in accordance with regulations. The most common violations are failure to implement a quarterly report regime; Customs brokers do not use digital signature of Customs brokers; and do not use code of Customs broker staff granted by the GDVC when carrying out Customs procedures; The goods owners only hire Customs brokers to sign fraudulent letters of introduction and to transfer Customs broker staff into staff of goods owners. Because the implementation is not in accordance with regulations, causing serious consequences, some Customs broker staff were criminally prosecuted due to taking advantage of digital signatures authorized by goods owners and making fraudulent dossiers and smuggling goods, which were detected by the Customs. In which, many Customs broker staff were criminally prosecuted.

For Customs brokers, these businesses have also complained about the examination for certificates of training in Customs declaration is very difficult. Thereby, the quantity of staff that have been granted a certificate is low. Some businesses assigned 10 staff to participate in the examination, but only a few staff were granted the certificates. In addition, the time to organize the examinations is quite long, so it is difficult for businesses to develop their human resource. Quang Nam Logistics has complained that one of its staff has a university degree with economic speciality and was granted the Customs broker staff certificate, but when it sent the dossiers for the proposal of granting a Customs broker certificate, he was refused because his speciality was not appropriate.

Regarding benefits, although suffering a strict examination for the operation certificate, Customs brokers have not yet enjoyed many incentives from the Customs compared to other businesses. Previously, the Customs provided special incentives for Customs brokers, but now almost all declarations have been cleared in the system, and these incentives are unavailable. In fact, there is the situation that businesses carry out Customs procedures without signing a contract as a Customs broker, thereby, the businesses propose Customs to check this situation to prevent the unfair competitiveness among Customs brokers. The Customs brokers use National Single Window Portal, but some ministries and sectors do not allow them to use their digital signatures and force them to use digital signatures of importers and exporters, causing trouble for Customs brokers, because they have to contact the importers and exporters when implementing goods clearance.

Needs to establish a Customs broker association

According to Mr. Dinh Ngoc Thang, Deputy Director in charge of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, Customs brokerage plays an important role, not only to ensure the compliance with regulations and restrict non-tariff including tax classification, tax payments but also to determine and detect and supervise goods effectively and prevent goods smuggling. This is to create competitive advantage and stability for countries. In addition, Customs brokers are considered as facilitators of the Customs in import and export activities.

Instead of maintaining the direct relationship with importers or exporters, the Customs brokers are the people who carry out all foreign and domestic commercial procedures on behalf of the importers or exports. Through the development, the Customs brokers become the consultants on logistics and represent their customers to be in charge of implementing payment of freight, loading and unloading fees, transportation fees, tolls, insurance, bonded warehouse fees and other related services.

Customs brokers: Crowed but not strong VCN- The customs brokers play an important role in assisting the export and import enterprises to carry ...

With the huge amount of businesses engaged in import and export activities in Ho Chi Minh City, over 46,000 businesses, this is an opportunity for the Customs brokers to develop and expand their operation. However, as reflected by some of the Customs brokers, the lack of ability of Customs broker staff has had a great impact on the performance of legitimate Customs brokers. This makes the goods owners concerned when authorizing the company to name on the Customs declaration. In addition, some importers and exporters are not compliant with Customs law, causing concern to businesses when signing a Customs broker contract.

In order to reconcile the above relationships and limit the violations, in the recent meeting with the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City, leaders of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department proposed the People's Council to create favorable conditions for quick establishment of a Customs broker association to help existing Customs brokers develop and operate for facilitating imports and exports. Instructing businesses in the city to apply the Customs broker mechanism in accordance with the world trend, for improving competitiveness and meeting requirements on further international integration.