HCM City Customs: Diversity in orginsing dialogue, faciliating to enterprises

Manager of High – Tech Park Customs Branch Vu Viet Chau talked with enterprises participated in the "morning coffee with enterprises" program. Photo: T.H

“Morning coffee with enterprises”

Starting from the end of September in 2019, High – Tech Park Customs Branch – HCM City Customs Department held a meeting, exchange and dialogue with the enterprises in a new form named “morning coffee with enteprises”. It has been highly appreciated by enterprises.

Nguyen Khanh Hung, Head of Customs Procedures Division, HCM City Branch of HANARO TNS Company said the High – Tech Park Customs Branch held a monthly meeting with enterprise under the form of morning coffee which was very meaningful. This form of friendly meeting helped enterprises feel free to exchange and talk about difficulties as well as being consulted and instructed about customs procedures.

Participating in “morning coffee with enterprises”, Hoang Xuan Long, Senior Managing Executive Officer of KCTC Vietnam said that KCTC was a customs broker and implemented clearance procedures for more than 4,000 customs declarations at High – Tech Park Customs Branch each month.

“I participated in many conferences and dialogue between Customs – business, however, the form of meeting like ’morning coffee with enterprises‘ held by High – Tech Park Customs Branch – HCM City Customs Department was the first time. I highly appriciated this activity of Customs authorities because it created friendliness and closeness between two sides from that enterprises could exchange their difficulties,” Long shared.

In the process of content preparation for the 2nd of morning coffee with enterprises in the end of this October, Manager of High – Tech Park Customs Branch Vu Viet Chau said that the characteristic of this unit was mainly implementing procedures for importng raw material for export production. The amount of enterprises implementing frequently were not too much, about 50 FDI enterprises and export production enterprises of that there were four authorised economic operators. Therefore, implementing the direction of the Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department on strengthening and diversifying forms of dialogue with enterprises, this year the Customs Branch selected a form of dialogue, meeting enterprises under the new model. With the model "morning coffee with enterprises", the branch would hold periodically on the last Monday of the month. The monthly business meetings were also held by customs branch under the thematic content so that information exchanged with enterprises would be updated more deeply and focused.

Concerned with difficulties of businesses

Besides the new form of dialogue "morning coffee with enterprise", from the beginning of 2019 to the present, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has implemented a variety of dialogues and solved problems for import-export enterprises.

Besides the annual dialogue, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has proactively coordinated with business associations to organise seminars on dialogues and training for thematic seminars, such as: customs brokers; British enterprises, European enterprises. Additionally, the border customs branches also organised a dialogue programme with enterprises operating petrol and oil; enterprises specializing in the field of outsourcing and investment. At the same time, sending working group to come to the enterprise for grasping information on production, business and support businesses. These forms of dialogue have received consensus and been highly appreciated by the business community.

According to Dinh Ngoc Thang, Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, on the basis of the motto “the business community and the Customs authority are a reliable partner, together to develop”, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department regularly held meetings specialised training on origin, value of goods, professional operations of customs brokers and dialogue with businesses, thereby helping enterprises to catch up with the regulations from the new legal documents, guide enterprises to voluntarily comply with customs laws.

With the viewpoint "Happy with the joy of businesses and concerns and difficulties of businesses", in recent years, through communication channels with businesses, such as: dialogue, meeting to work with businesses and through the process of implementing customs procedures Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department detected and noted many inadequacies and obstacles affecting the cargo clearance of enterprises, so they have proactively summarised and reported to the competent authorities in order to remove difficulties for enterprises. For example, inadequacies in specialised inspection of imported goods was one of the major barriers affecting the clearance of goods of enterprises and issues about origin of goods were supported by Customs Department to solve the problem together with enterprises.

Furthermore, not only diversifying forms of dialogue, to facilitate businesses, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has built and implemented an IT system with the goal of synchronising the output and input data in order to serve businesses. Currently, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has been cooperated with Saigon Newport Corporation to implement the project "Customs procedures in logistics and anti-congestion of goods at Cat Lai port", helping clear goods quickly and reduce costs for enterprises. At the same time, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has been implemented the project of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Management System, of that there was a connection program with businesses. Enterprises could install application on mobilephone, laptop so that they could track and control the routes of import and export shipments of their shipment and exchange information via email towards the transparent and convenient operations for businesses.