Heading toward the official implementation of the Voluntary Compliance Program

Scene of the workshop

On April 10, 2024, in Quang Ninh, the Risk Management Department (General Department of Vietnam Customs) coordinated with Quang Ninh Customs Department and Hai Phong Customs Department to hold a workshop to prepare for the preliminary assessment of the implementation of the Pilot Program on supporting businesses in voluntarily complying with Customs laws in two years, moving towards official implementation of the Program.

Also participating in the workshop were 12 member businesses of the Program and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Customs agency.

The workshop was organized to collect comprehensive comments from enforcement agencies at the department level, branch level, groups/teams at Quang Ninh Customs Department, Hai Phong Customs Department and member businesses to prepare for the official implementation of the Program on supporting and encouraging businesses to voluntarily comply with customs laws (according to Decision 1399/QD-TCHQ of the General Department of Vietnam Customs).

After 2 years of piloting, 289 businesses were participating in the Program and already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Customs authority. In particular, Quang Ninh Customs had 16 businesses and Hai Phong Customs had 21 businesses.

Through the implementation, many member businesses' compliance levels have improved.

Accordingly, about 87% of businesses maintain and increase compliance levels (101 businesses raise compliance levels, reaching 36.20%, 147 businesses maintain compliance levels, reaching 50.86%). Thereby, the rate of document inspection and physical inspection improved significantly, helping member businesses save costs and reduce clearance time, with the Green channel declaration rate increasing by 6.16%, red channel declaration rate decreasing by 0.55%.

At the customs departments, all directions and instructions for implementing the Program have been fully implemented, such as arranging a separate area with signposts to check documents, allocating resources and time, and assigning experienced and qualified staff to inspect goods.

As a result, the Customs authority recorded and resolved 524 requests for support, basically 100% of requests were handled promptly; 10 businesses actively participated and were honored.

Quang Ninh Customs Department is recognized as one of the local units that methodically, proactively and approaches the Program.

Through reports and discussions at the conference, most businesses supported and wished for the Program to be further expanded in terms of scope and benefits brought by the Program.

However, after 2 years of implementing the Pilot Program, difficulties and obstacles still arise from both the professional system, the current legal document system and the allocation of enforcement resources to meet the expectations of the businesses.

The workshop proposed many recommendations to solve in the future, focusing on contents such as conditions and criteria for participants in the Program, and inviting more import-export business associations to participate with Honorary member roles for support and advice.

On the other hand, it was necessary to allocate resources and increase efficiency more practically with support activity groups for member businesses. The establishment of a coordination mechanism, inspection, supervision and monitoring mechanism between the Customs agency and member businesses, and the identification of member businesses on the industry's professional systems in the whole country, especially posing the problem of information technology application and digital transformation in the future for this Program...