Efforts to reduce customs clearance time

	Establishing a monitoring mechanism to promote the unified deployment of the National Single Window
	Shortening Customs clearance time thanks to risk management
	​Enterprises appreciate the IT application of the Customs sector

Customs officers of Lao Cai International Customs Branch (Lao Cai Customs Department) supervise import-export vehicles and goods at Kim Thanh International Border Gate No.2. Photo: T.B

“Complex index”

The Doing Business Index has been conducted annually by the World Bank (WB) since 2001 worldwide, in which the “cross-border trade transaction index” is one of 11 assessment indexes. According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, this index measures the time and cost of carrying out the entire process of exporting and importing goods. In 2018, Vietnam’s cross-border trade transaction index ranked 100th.

According to detailed analysis of the time and cost of cross-border trade transactions stated by the WB representatives at the Conference "Promoting the NSW, ASW and trade facilitation" (in July, 2018), the time under Customs authorities accounted for only 11 percent for imported goods and 4 percent for exported goods in the total time for cross-border trade transactions. On the other hand, costs related to customs inspection and customs brokerage fees accounted for 11 percent for imported goods and 10 percent for exported goods in the total cost of cross-border trade transactions.

The remaining time and costs are under relevant ministries, sectors and agencies such as import-export enterprises, warehouse, yard and port operators, transportation enterprises and logistics. The costs for loading, unloading and storage at ports and logistics account for 64 percent for imported goods and 63 percent for export goods.

Thus, it can be seen that cross-border trade transactions are one of the most difficult and complex indexes and is related to ministries, sectors and units.

Need synchrous coordination

In recent times, implementing the Government’s direction in Resolution 02/NQ-CP, the Ministry of Finance has proposed and deployed a series of solutions.

Specifically, it issued Decision No. 90/QD-BTC on the action plan for implementing Resolution No. 02/NQ-CP, which specifies tasks and activities and assigns tasks to each unit and the time for each activity and requests a quarterly report on progress.

The Ministry of Finance has also researched and published documents on index assessment methods of the World Bank; established information channels to update the index data for international organisations and related units.

The Ministry of Finance will coordinate with relevant ministries, sectors and units to develop and implement the plan on implementing measures to improve the rank of Vietnam's cross-border trade transaction index in 2019-2021, which specifies solutions and tasks chaired by the Ministry of Finance; solutions and tasks proposed by the Ministry of Finance and coordinated with ministries, sectors and units for implementation.

The plan focuses on deploying five key solution groups: improve operational efficiency of customs authorities; continue to implement comprehensive reforms in specialised management and inspections and connection to the National Single Window portal; enhance quality, reduce time and cost of loading and unloading and circulating of goods in warehouses, yards and ports; improve quality and reduce time and costs for transportation; and promote activities to support the implementation of import and export procedures.

The Customs (Ministry of Finance) has made efforts in implementing solutions to reform administrative procedures, reduce the customs clearance time of goods and achieved positive results. However, the cross-border trade transaction is complex index and is related to many ministries and sectors. Thus, to achieve the target of raising the cross-border trade transaction index by 3-5 places in 2019, there is a need for active participation and great efforts of agencies and units, including specialised management agencies; People's Committees of provinces and cities; import-export enterprises; port and yard operators, and logistics enterprises.

For example, the implementation of NSW, ASW and the reform of specialised inspection are important solutions to cut customs clearance time and improve the cross-border trade transaction index. However, the deployment of ministries, sectors and agencies is still slow.

The goal of the 1899 Committee this year is to connect 61 new administrative procedures to the NSW. But in the 5th meeting of the committee which took place recently, it was shown that by the end of July, the ministries and sectors only connected 16 procedures. Thus, in the last five months of the year, there are still 45 procedures that must be connected, including 14 procedures of the Ministry of Health, 12 procedures of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and eight procedures of the Ministry of National Defence, accounting for 75 percent of the procedures to be connected.

Currently, there are no specific statistics from specialised agencies but according to customs news’ reporter, the number of connected procedures from July to now is insignificant and many procedures are still in the pilot connection phase.

For specialised inspections, in 2015, there were 13 ministries and sectors issued a list of 82,698 items subject to specialised inspection. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had the largest number of 65,185 items, accounting for 79 percent of the total number. The other five ministries have 1,000 or more items: the Ministry of Ministry of Health (5,730); Ministry of Industry and Trade (5,096); Ministry of Science and Technology (3,434); Ministry of Transport (1,433) and the Ministry of Information and Communications (1,034).

However, by mid-2019, the total number of item subject to specialised management and inspection reduced to 70,087, down 12,600. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is also the unit with the largest reduction with 7,623 items.

To reduce customs clearance time and improve the cross-border trade transaction index, the efforts of Customs authorities are not enough. The Ministry of Finance (the General Department of Vietnam Customs) has actively coordinated with ministries and sectors to implement.