Director General of Vietnam Customs meets and discusses with Ambassador of United Kingdom in Vietnam

Scene at the meeting. Photo: H. Nụ

At the meeting, Director General Nguyen Van Can expressed his appreciation to Mr. Giles Lever for spending his time to come and work with the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

Director General Nguyen Van Can said that, Vietnam Customs is in the process of reforms in all aspects of customs modernization in order to promote trade exchange and investment as well as to improve the effectiveness of anti-smuggling and trade frauds.

Vietnam Customs is also moving towards linking the National Single Window Portal and the ASEAN Single Window as well as implementing WTO commitments in bilateral agreements. This is to enhance the efficiency of bilateral cooperation with other countries and coordinate information in the prevention and combat of smuggling and trade fraud with other countries in the world.

Moreover, the cooperation for information exchange between the two sides has been limited, although the Vietnam Customs and HM Revenue & Customs (Her Majesty’s Treasury and Customs) have signed the Memorandum of Understanding on anti-smuggling cooperation and cross-border customs offenses, dated 29/6/2007 (referred to as the MOU). However, the MOU has not met the need for cooperation in exchanging anti-smuggling information between the two sides.

Therefore, in the context of the strategic partnership between the two countries and the development of bilateral trade, in order to enhance the effectiveness of cooperation between the two countries in the coming time, Vietnam Customs discussed with the British Ambassador on the possibility of concluding a government-level agreement on cooperation and mutual assistance in the customs field to replace the previously signed MOU between the Vietnamese Customs and the UK Customs.

This agreement will focus on issues of trade facilitation cooperation, the fight against smuggling, illicit traffic in narcotics, prohibited goods, cooperation in human resources development, technical assistance, information exchange, and customs management experience.

At the same time, the agreement will also strengthen cooperation on specific issues on strengthening customs cooperation and revenue collection, efforts to combat wildlife trade, and organized crime and the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco in the country.

Ambassador Giles Lever said that the British Government and British Customs are very interested in the orientation of cooperation with other countries, and the problems that face the Vietnam Customs are also the same problems facing the British Customs.

Furthermore, Ambassador Giles Lever emphasized that training support to improve the capacity of customs officials in border control and smuggling operations is very practical in the trend of offending activities. The law is increasingly sophisticated, but by using a variety of information technology applications, digital and internet, these can assist the anti-crime enforcement agencies.

Therefore, within the framework of the goal of the Search for Border Protection Force, Ambassador Giles Lever expects bilateral cooperation between the UK-Vietnam Customs Office to contribute to the exchange of information, making trade between the two countries Vietnam-England more favorable.

In this regard, Director General of Vietnam Customs Nguyen Van Can said that Vietnam Customs now has an online customs supervision department, however, related to the issue of assessment and analysis of information sources, it is not very effective.

Therefore, Director General Nguyen Van Can hoped that if the project supported the Vietnamese Customs Department technical section to analyze data on the situation and trend of global crime at the land border and sea border, especially in Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific where Vietnam is concerned, with new methods and devices for detecting and fighting against customs-related crimes so that the Vietnamese Customs can research applications, and propose for the provision of necessary equipment for the Project.

Particularly, the support for organizing in-depth training courses for experts (for in-service retraining) in activities such as: information collection, customs intelligence, analysis and evaluation data, documents and customs documents for key analysis, questioning and detection of crimes in commercial frauds, smuggling, counterfeit goods, human trafficking, infringing goods of intellectual property, drug trafficking, wildlife trade, especially in the form of e-commerce, export and transit forms, port transfer ... will help Vietnamese Customs achieve higher results with public violations, anti-smuggling and trade fraud, Director General Nguyen Van Can emphasized.