Customs receives and handles 38,233 applications, administrative procedures under single window mechanism, interlinked single window mechanism

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Under the direction of the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Customs, units throughout the sector have implemented the single window mechanism and signed a cooperation agreement with the Vietnam Post Office on receiving and returning services of results of administrative procedures through the public postal service.

Accordingly, from April 1, 2016 to the end of June 30, 2020, the whole Customs sector received and handled 38,233 applications and administrative procedures under the single-window mechanism and interlinked single window mechanism from organizations, individuals and enterprises.

In particular, the number of applications submitted at customs offices was 11,373, equivalent to 29.74% of the total number of received applications and the number of applications received via postal services was 26,860, equivalent to 70.26% of the total received applications.

The General Department of Customs assesses that most of the applications were handled and returned on time as prescribed, which was appreciated by organizations and individuals. However, in fact, there were some cases of delayed processing and late returning due to the need for comments from relevant agencies or the large workload.

Organizations, individuals and enterprises submit applications at the General Department of Customs. Photo: H. Nu

Specifically, in the field of import and export duties, as of June 30, 2020, over 80% of the total received applications have been processed and returned, the remainder is in processing time-limit because they require long processing times (applications for consideration of tax exemption for imported goods; applications for determining commodity code).

About 2% of unprocessed applications were due to complicated issues such as predetermining of commodity codes takes a long time to verify and consult relevant agencies, so the processing time was delayed compared with the regulations.

In the field of management and supervision, by June 30, 2020, customs units have handled and returned results on time for about 75% of the total number of received applications; about 20% of the applications under the time-limit have not been settled, 5% of the applications have been unprocessed or processed beyond the prescribed time-limit.

The remaining fields such as post-clearance audit, customs IT &statistics and customs verification have been strictly conducted.

Also according to the General Department of Customs, the returning of administrative procedure results for cases requesting direct reception accounted for about 30% of the total number of received applications.

According to the General Department of Customs, after more than four years of official deployment of the single-window mechanism under Decision 09/2015 / ND-CP, Decree 61/2018 / ND-CP and Decision 45/2016 / QD- TTg on the implementation of the single-window mechanism; receiving applications and returning results of administrative procedures through public postal service at the General Department of Customs, the Customs sector has achieved remarkable results.

Customs has actively improved the relationship and created confidence for organizations, individuals and enterprises when contacting and proposing administrative procedures at Customs offices, reducing travel times and contact with many units and administrative levels in customs agencies for organizations, individuals and enterprises; shortening the processing time for administrative procedures and satisfying organizations, individuals and enterprises

In addition, according to the General Department of Customs, the receiving of applications and the returning of results of administrative settlement through public postal services is one of the administrative reform solutions of the Government in general, and of the finance sector and the General Department of Customs in particular, which aims to better serve the demand for handling administrative procedures with the State management agencies in related fields. Therefore, in the implementation process, there are many advantages due to a solid legal basis and the support of relevant agencies and the business community.

The General Department of Customs and the provincial and municipal Customs Departments still maintain the receiving and returning of administrative procedure settlement via the public postal service. However, according to the data reported by the provincial and municipal Customs Departments and the General Department of Customs, very few individuals and organizations select this service.

The General Department of Customs stated that this shortcoming was because the postal service provider still has limitations in publicizing information widely to the business community. Therefore, in the near future, the General Department of Customs recommends to soon study and deploy the electronic single window information system of the Ministry of Finance and its attached units as planned to receive, handle and monitor the processing of administrative procedures in line with the Government's general modernization reform requirements.

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At the same time, the Ministry of Finance and the Vietnam Post Corporation need to organize a preliminary evaluation of the cooperation results forreceivingapplications and returning the results through the postal service to clearly indicate the shortcomings mentioned and propose solutions.The Vietnam Post Corporation should direct the synchronous implementation in the entire postal system to improve service quality.