Ho Chi Minh City Customs: Focusing on solutions to collect state budget in the last months of the year

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	Budget collection challenges of Ho Chi Minh City Customs in the second half of the year

Customs officers of Saigon Port Area 1, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department inspect imported goods. Photo: Thu Hoa

Narrowing the revenue gap

According to Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department Phan Minh Le, in the first half of 2024, the world witnessed many complex fluctuations; trade and investment continued to decline, while issues such as food security, natural disasters and climate change became increasingly urgent.

Along with that, the domestic economic situation after a long period of slowdown has had positive changes but still faces many challenges, production and business activities in some fields are still facing many difficulties, industrial production is recovering slowly. In addition, the implementation of newly issued policies on exemption, reduction and extension of taxes, fees and charges has directly affected the state budget collection of the Customs sector in general and Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department in particular.

In the context of the socio-economic situation with intertwined opportunities and challenges, the implementation of the state budget collection task is forecasted to be more difficult than favorable. The task set for Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department is very heavy with the assigned budget of VND 130,800 billion.

By the end of August 2024, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department collected over VND 82,987 billion in state budget revenue, reaching 63.45% of the estimate assigned by the Ordinance.

According to the analysis of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, if calculated in the first half of 2024, the state budget revenue of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department reached over VND 61,007 billion, reaching 46.64% of the estimate, down 4.12% (equivalent to an absolute decrease of VND 2,622.3 billion) compared to the same period in 2023. Thus, the revenue reduction is increasingly narrowing compared to the decrease of more than VND 5,000 billion in the first months of the year.

Of which, 7/12 sub-departments had state budget revenue lower than 50% of the assigned estimate, 6/12 sub-departments had state budget revenue lower than the same period last year. With the current collection rate, the estimated state budget revenue for the whole year of 2024 of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department will reach 123,800 billion VND, reaching 94.65% of the estimate (130,800 billion VND), a deficit of 7,000 billion VND compared to the legal target.

Many solutions for the last months of the year

With the above difficulties, in order to complete the 2024 State budget revenue estimate, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has issued a Plan to strengthen the implementation of solutions in the last months of the year.

Accordingly, the Import-Export Tax Department strengthens close coordination with sub-departments to monitor and analyze the State budget revenue situation of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department and each unit; compares the implementation progress with the legal targets by day, week, month, quarter, promptly reports to the department's leaders and proposes solutions and recommendations to ensure budget revenue.

Regularly analyze data and evaluate the impacts of tax policies and factors affecting State budget revenue such as economic - political - social fluctuations, free trade agreements (FTAs), prices of raw materials in the world, etc. Monitor the potential revenue sources, forecast the development trends of key items and plan budget revenue for the next stages.

Closely monitor the project implementation situation, import-export activities of enterprises with large tax payments to the State budget and import-export turnover in and outside the area, monitor the situation of revenue movement at the unit to optimize revenue sources, minimize revenue loss and strengthen tax management.

Strengthen support and consultation for enterprises on new regulations and policies related to import-export, ensuring transparency and convenience in the process of customs clearance of goods.

Continue to perform the classification of goods in accordance with the provisions of current documents. The Import-Export Tax Department monitors the implementation of legal regulations, directives, instructions and rectification documents of all levels on the classification of goods at Customs Sub-Departments.

Units strengthen the inspection of goods codes during customs clearance and after customs clearance, focusing on groups of goods with large turnover, goods with easily confused codes; Conduct a review of the codes of green lane declarations, cleared shipments with goods similar to the items in the Classification Analysis Notices, cases of the same item but declaring many different codes or inconsistent classification analysis results, etc to promptly collect taxes due to incorrect application of codes, prevent businesses from taking advantage of the law's flexibility to cheat on codes and tax rates, contributing to increasing state budget revenue, etc.