Increasing complaints about the origin of goods

Shrimp is one of the products that are frequently required to inspect the origin of goods. Photo: Nguyễn Huế

Mr. Chau Viet Bac, Vice Secretary General of VIAC said that, as of the end of December 2018, Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry received 110 letters requesting the re-examination of 287 sets of certificates of origin (C/O). In that VCCI answered 105 letters of verification and verified for 237 dossiers.

The items requested for inspection were commonly cars, tires, screws, clothing, ceramic tiles, shrimp, food, gloves, leather shoes. In that, EU market accounted for 90%, the remaining of 10% was from other main markets including Taiwan, India, Turkey and Iraq.

The reason for the complaints about origin of goods was due to the suspicion of forging signatures authorized to sign C/O and organization of issuing C/O in accordance with Vietnamese law on illegal transshipment goods, goods that are not qualified for Vietnamese origin.

For suspicion of goods that are not eligible for Vietnamese origin, it was primarily about sensitive goods which were subjected to safeguard measures tariffs and were exported in large quantities to countries, or goods items suspected about Vietnam’s producing capacity.

Typically, in 2016, Vietnam imported more than 1 million tons of aluminum; however, the exported aluminum items that obtained Vietnam origin is quite small and led to the investigation of goods origin.

In addition, the US-China trade war also posed a problem of fraudulent goods, increasing trade barriers from the US market to Vietnam's exports. It is not only affects enterprises doing authentic business, but also affects the investigation of origin of goods.

According to Mr. Chau Viet Bac, the fact showed that in the process of inspecting the origin of goods, Vietnamese enterprises still face some problems of documents, data, production facilities ... failing to meet the inspection requirements. Therefore, to proactively respond to vouchers management related to goods origin and prices, they should respond professionally. Accordingly, businesses need to store and manage documents of goods origin in order to be ready for the inspection process ... /.