Cut and simplify many customs administrative procedures

	How to simplify administrative procedures for businesses
	The General Department of Vietnam Customs removes obstacles for enterprises
	Two administrative procedures in Customs area

Operations at Lao Cai Customs Department. Photo: T. Binh

Attach reform and simplification to information and communication

To effectively perform administrative procedure reform, the General Department of Customs issued a 2019 plan on administrative reform and indicators for monitoring and evaluating administrative reform results; worked with the Prime Minister's Private Economic Development Research Board to capture and discuss the results of survey of administrative compliance costs and developed questions and answers on customs administrative procedures for the National Portal.

To carry out the 2019 administrative procedure control plan, the General Department of Customs organised the assessment of the impact of administrative procedures on nine draft legal documents chaired by the drafts by the General Department of Customs (including 38 revised administrative procedures and abolished administrative procedures). After that, submit to the Ministry of Finance for promulgation eight decisions to announce administrative procedures in eight legal documents including 17 new administrative procedures, 16 revised administrative procedures, five abolished administrative procedures and four replaced procedures.

In addition, Customs authorities at all levels will regularly publicise administrative procedures, receive and handle administrative procedures at customs offices, or customs checkpoints or e-portals or websites. The General Department finalised the simplification of two administrative procedures in Circular No. 22/2019 / TT-BTC; simplified seven administrative procedures, cut five business conditions and simplified 14 business conditions in the draft decree amending and supplementing Decree No. 68/2016 / ND-CP.

On improving the business environment and enhancing national competitiveness in implementing Governments Resolution No. 02 / NQ-CP of January 1, 2019, the General Department of Customs issued the Action Plan at Decision No. 240 / QĐ-TCHQ dated January 31, 2019 including 39 task groups, missions and 44 products, focusing on perfecting the customs law system and coordinating the effective implementation of the Prime Minister's Decision No. 1254 / QD-TTg of September 26, 2018.

So far, most tasks for implementing Resolution No. 02 / NQ-CP have been completed. They were: submitting Decree No. 85/2019 / ND-CP for promulgation on November 14, 2019; submitting to the Government for consideration and promulgation a decree on connecting and sharing information between Government agencies and stakeholders through the National Single Window in import, export and transit of goods; coordinating with other ministries and agencies to increase the number of administrative procedures carried out on the national single-window portal, and review the list of overlapping items in specialised inspection.

To to improve Vietnam's Cross-border trade transaction index in 2019-2020, the General Department of Customs advised and proposed the Ministry of Finance coordinate with concerned ministries and sectors in developing and issuing a plan to improve Vietnam’s Cross-border trade transaction index in 2019-2021.

The General Department of Customs issued the plan to improve Vietnam’s Cross-border trade transaction index. In addition, the General Department of Customs advised and proposed the Ministry of Finance set up an interdisciplinary working group to survey the cross-border trade transaction index and take measures to improve the index ranking.

The General Department of Customs together with the interdisciplinary working group worked with the Ministry of Transportation to solve problems and propose solutions related to the cross-border trade transaction index under management by the Ministry of Transportation, conducted a survey on the cross-border trade transaction index in 2019 according to the World Bank method and report to the Ministry of Finance to formulate a plan to implement solutions to improve index rankings in 2020; reported to the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister on 2020 Doing Business report of the World Bank (which reported the results of the cross-border trade transaction index) and proposed solutions to upgrade the index in the following year.

Synchronous reforms

The General Department of Customs assessed administrative reform was implemented synchronously in all aspects. Customs authorities worked with relevant agencies and units in handling administrative procedures and fully assessed the impacts of all draft legal documents containing administrative procedures provision. Therefore, overcoming the situation of delayed announcement of administrative procedures and urgently making statistics and submitting to the Ministry of Finance to publicise administrative procedures for outstanding documents. The General Department of Customs also directed the situation of issuing administrative documents containing administrative procedures, thereby improving quality of regulations and promptly handling administrative procedures in the customs sector, better serving the needs of individuals, organisations and firms in import and export activities.

The development of documents and the publication of the cross-border trade transaction index according to the World Bank's assessment brought about correct and unified understanding.

Despite positive results, the General Department of Customs also pointed out some shortcomings and inadequacies in administrative procedure reform. They included the fact that administrative reform was concentrated in a number of large units. However, these units had huge workloads of a complex nature, which made it difficult to meet progress of administrative reform tasks.

Measuring satisfaction of businesses in the implementation of administrative procedures via NSW VCN- The satisfaction of the business community in the implementation of public services via the National Single ...

In addition, the survey on the cross-border trade transaction index conducted by the interdisciplinary working group, of which members belonged to many ministries, sectors, associations and the VCCI, needed more time to ask members to approve the contents of the plan before deploying, and survey questionnaires were sent by VCCI to ensure objectivity.