Cutting specialised inspection: Facilitation associated with anti-trade fraud

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Deputy Prime Minister VuongDinh Hue addressesthe conference.

At the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said that the specialised inspection reform for import and export goods is associated with facilitation and anti-smuggling. Unreasonable regulations should be reviewed and reduced.

President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee Tran Thanh Man said the Committee always accompanies the Government in promoting socio-economic development. Reforming administrative procedures, enhancing national competitiveness and improving investment environment are urgent requirements.

Regarding supervision of solutions for specialised inspection and reduction of Customs clearance time for import and export goods, Vice President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee Ngo Sach Thuc said that through supervision at 10 provinces and cities, theCommittee identified some shortcomings and inadequacies that should be removed in the specialised inspection and National Single Window mechanism.

Currently, the National Single Window is focusing on handling administrative procedures for Customs clearance but does not focus on sharing information for State management.

For specialised inspection, the quantity of goods subject to inspection still accounts for a large proportion of more than19%. Although the list of goods subject to management and specialised inspection has been reduced, there is a large quantity of the list that needs to be cut. Thereby, specialised management ministries should accelerate the reform of specialisedinspection and Customs clearance under the direction of the Government and the Prime Minister.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said many problems need to be deployed and the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee should continue to supervise tasks assigned by the Government toministries and sectors. Hue said that in 2018, the National Single Window mechanism achieved the most comprehensive and breakthrough results. From the deployment to 2017, administrative procedures that were connected to the National Single Window mechanism only reached 47 of 173 procedures. In 2018, ministries and sectors connected 126 administrative procedures. “The goal of connecting all procedures to the National Single Window by the end of 2019 is absolutely feasible,”Hue said.

For the specialised inspection, the Government aims to cut half of the list of import and export goods subject to specialised inspection. In 2018, 6,776 of 9,726 procedures were reduced, reaching nearly 70%, exceeding the target assigned by the Government. Thereby saving about 12 million working days, equivalent to 5,400 billion VND/year for enterprises. These results have contributed positively to strengthening trade exchanges.

The performance of these tasks has not been effective. The implementation is still different from the requirements in documents; The level of satisfaction of enterprises is not high; the number of enterprises is not significant; trade facilitation associated with anti-trade fraud has not yet been ensured.

“Although the number of administrative procedures processed on National Single Window sharply increased in 2018, it did not achieved the plan, 18 procedures must be connected in 2019. The quantity of consignment was still high of 19%, the target assigned by the Government was 15%,” Hue noted.

“There is overlap in specialised management and inspection; ministries andsectors issued the lists of goods subject inspection but without HS codes, standards and regulations. The Government requested to stop this situation in 2019. If the lists of goods subject inspection are not issued, the inspection is not implemented,” Hue requested

A shortcoming in the specialised inspection mentioned by Hue is socialisation. “Ministries and sectors mainly manage the State, issue standards and implement specialized inspection in key stages and must implement due to national security and social order, the stages of specialized inspection should be implemented by private sector. It will be transparent. Ministries have not yet removed the function of both issuing standards, regulations and directly inspecting,”Hue said and requested Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee control this problem.

In the implementation of National Single Window mechanism, the coordination between ministries and sectors is still confusing and information exchange is still passive and the investment of ministries and sectors is not unified.

Hue requested ministries and sectors to review and complete legal frame work. The reduction exceeds the plan but some ministries have not yet met requirements. The reduction in specialised inspection must reach two goals both in terms of trade facilitation but also anti-trade fraud. “Reduced procedures should be reviewed to detect loopholes or not. Contents to be cut are not cut, and contents which have been cut become loopholes, easily leading to group's interest.” Hue requested theVietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee to not only supervises the State management agencies but also monitor the performance of enterprises.