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Director of HCM City Customs Department Dinh Ngoc Thang reports Scheme for customs reform.

The City Senior Rapporteur's meeting of the third quarter of 2022, chaired by Nguyen Tho Truyen, Deputy Head of the Propaganda Department of the HCM City Party Committee, was attended by 50 city-level reporters who are leaders of the City Party Committee, departments, and agencies, on October 4, at the headquarters of HCM City Customs Department.

HCM City Customs Department has achieved outstanding results in performance. Therefore, the director of the HCM City Customs Department, Dinh Ngoc Thang, was invited as a rapporteur with the theme results of customs reform (application of information technology in customs operation; customs clearance procedures; solutions to accompany businesses; detection and prevention of smuggling and trade fraud, etc.).

According to Mr Dinh Ngoc Thang, implementing the motto "the business community and HCM City Customs Department as reliable partners, accompanying each other for development" and the goal of promoting administrative reform, customs modernization and facilitating businesses and boosting economic development, the city customs department is ranked in the top of units under the whole Customs sector in terms of administrative procedure reform and enterprise satisfaction index.

The city customs department has actively implemented solutions to facilitate the business community and import and export activities.

The department has implemented the "Project on Customs procedures in logistics and anti-congestion at Cat Lai Port" since 2020. The project has helped shorten the time of goods receipt and delivery. With an average of 1,450 declarations, businesses have saved 2,175 hours for carrying out procedures and reduced travel costs, storage, loading and unloading. As a result, it optimized the production plans of enterprises, improved competitiveness, increased goods circulation and expanded the city's logistics belt to neighbouring provinces. As a result, it is estimated to save more than VND3,000 billion/per year in social costs.

The HCM Customs Administration System project built and implemented in 2019 has created a breakthrough in the application of scientific technology in management. Accordingly, it is estimated that more than 90% of businesses have directly benefited in terms of travel time and costs. Based on a mobile platform, the system provides information not only for customs declarants and customs brokers but also for shippers, partners, and credit institutions. Furthermore, with more than 63,000 businesses implementing import-export procedures at HCM City Customs Department, the system will save at least 150,000 working days and 8 hours to carry out customs procedures.

The rapporteurs participate in the meeting.

Through the report of the leader of the HCM City Customs Department, the senior reporters highly appreciated the administrative reform, trade facilitation, anti-smuggling and trade fraud by the department.

At the meeting, Mr Tan Xuan Bao, former Deputy Director of the HCM City Officers Academy, was impressed with the contents shared by the HCM City Customs Department Director, which shows the crucial role of customs authority as the "Gatekeeper of the economy".

"During the development process, Vietnam Customs has continuously implemented reform and modernization, obtained achievements contributing to socio-economic development and the development of Vietnam Customs to simplify customs procedures, support enterprises in carrying out import and export procedures, improve cross-border trade transaction index and national competitiveness in Customs field"- said Bao.

The rapporteurs highly appreciated the HCM City Customs Department as the leading department in effectively implementing paperless meeting rooms and hoped that shortly, other units in the city will also realize the important role and implement the paperless meeting room. This will contribute to improving efficiency and saving time in the meetings, while increasing the efficiency in handling work, management and administration at the units.