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Fishery enterprises are greatly affected by the Covid-19 epidemic. Photo: T.H

Export costs extra

According to VASEP, at the beginning of 2020, VASEP has repeatedly received feedback from enterprises that the Customs of border gates require export shipments to be certified by the competent authorities in codes and barcodes for specific cases when registering to use foreign barcodes according to Clause 2, Article 19b of Decree No. 74/2018/ND-CP of May 15, 2018 of the Government amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 132/2008/ND-CP dated December 31, 2008 detailing the implementation of a number of articles of the Law on Product Quality. Violations will be sanctioned in accordance with Decree 119/2017/ND-CP stipulating penalties for administrative violations in the field of standards, measurement and quality of goods.

This provision has incurred additional administrative procedures and increased costs for enterprises. Accordingly, enterprises must pay VND500,000 per registration (for records with less than or equal to 50 product codes) or VND10,000 per product (for records with more than 50 product codes). With the large number of Vietnam's current export products, the total cost of enterprises to pay for writing codes and barcodes on labels for export shipments is not insignificant.

Not only that, when enterprises contact the provincial competent authorities to apply for certification, they are informed that they must contact the National Barcode Symbol Center (GS1) in Hanoi because the locality is not competent.

When carrying out the procedures for registration of the use of foreign codes and barcodes according to the instructions of GS1, the procedures for applying for certification with GS1 also require: Authorization letter, authorization period and identification records of customer codes and barcodes must be certified by a competent authority of their country (and must include a Vietnamese translation document).

According to enterprises, the above documents are often difficult to apply, time-consuming, all the procedures must be done on paper, there is no online registration procedure, and the procedure at GS1 after having records and payment takes 2-3 days to get the result and the certificate is valid for only 6 months.

The request for customers to provide too many papers is creating difficulties in exporting goods for enterprises. Meanwhile, enterprises often have new customers, so the codes and barcodes of products must also be renewed and updated regularly, causing a lot of time and costs.

Promptly remove difficulties for enterprises during epidemic

Responding to the problems of members, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) had a meeting with the representative of the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality on the inadequacies related to foreign code and barcode registration on the packaging of export seafood batches having a great influence on the production and export of enterprises.

Subsequently, on March 31, 2020, VASEP sent an Official Dispatch to the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality proposing to resolve problems in the regulation of codes and barcodes on export goods packages to facilitate quick customs clearance for export shipments.

On April 10, 2020, after receiving the comments from the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality, the General Department of Customs issued Official Dispatch No. 2324/TCHQ-GSQL to direct the Customs Sub-Departments to unify and facilitate for export procedures, Customs officers do not require Customs declarants to produce written certification of competent authorities about the use of foreign codes and barcodes.

Accordingly, the General Department of Customs requires Customs declarants to be responsible for the use of foreign codes and barcodes on exported goods and packaging.

According to VASEP, receiving this information from the General Department of Customs, seafood enterprises are happy to initially remove the burden for export shipments during the Covid-19 epidemic. Many seafood enterprises have expressed their joy and thanked the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality (Ministry of Science and Technology) and the General Department of Customs (Ministry of Finance) for these flexible responses, especially when enterprises were suffering severe damage from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the long term, seafood enterprises are waiting for the Ministry of Science and Technology to include this issue in the early plans for the second and third quarter of 2020, submitting to the Government for amendment of Clause 2, Article 19b of Decree No. 74/2018/ND-CP in the direction of responding to the synchronization of legal documents in order to abolish the application of regulations on writing of codes and barcodes as well as notifying Vietnam Competent Authority for using certification of foreign codes and barcodes for exports.

Accordingly, Vietnam's export goods only need to be labeled according to the goods purchasing contract or at the request of the importer, provided that these requirements do not distort the nature of the goods and do not violate the law of Vietnam and the importing country.