Lang Son Customs Department: Facilitating and attracting businesses, striving to increase revenues

	Goods no longer stuck by China's new C/O form at Lang Son border
	Goods stuck at Lang Son due to China's new C/O
	Director of Lang Son Customs Department takes duty at Cao Bang Customs

Mr. Nguyen Hoang Tuan, Director of Lang Son Customs Department

What solutions has Lang Son Customs Department been implementing to attract businesses to do customs procedures?

Besides the solutions of the Government, the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Customs and Lang Son province, the goal of the Lang Son Customs Department is to promote the reform of administrative procedures, accompany businesses to promote import and export activities as well as ensure the strict state management of customs in accordance with the law.

The unit has been focusing on improving the efficiency of administrative procedure reform and customs modernization to create favorable conditions for both enterprises and customs offices. Of which, focusing on providing online public services at the highest levels according to the customs industry's schedule, processing documents through the national single-window portal, the ASEAN single-window portal, deploying the scheme of electronic tax payment and customs clearance 24/7 in order to create the most favorable conditions for businesses and reducing the time for goods clearance.

In 2019, Lang Son Customs Department has also actively implemented the Automated Customs Goods Management System. The unit has also directed the Customs Branches at border gates and specialized sections to publicly list the administrative procedures under the jurisdiction of the industry for businesses to look up.

In addition, the unit also actively propagates and provides information on import and export policies along with strengthening discussions with enterprises in order to promptly remove difficulties and problems related to customs. The unit also focused on strengthening the fight against smuggling and trade fraud, applying risk management, post-clearance inspection to detect and strictly handle organizations and individuals that violate customs laws, abetting smuggling and trade fraud.

Statistics show that, up to now, 99% of enterprises have made declarations through VNACCS/VCIS. Up to September 30, this Department has made procedures for more than 2,705 enterprises with 80,000 sets of import and export goods declarations, there has been no case reflecting the delay in clearance of goods.

Could you tell us more about the results Lang Son Customs has achieved from supporting import and export activities of enterprises?

In 2019, Lang Son Customs Department is assigned a revenue of VND2.800 billion, in the context that Vietnam has participated in many free trade agreements and tariff reductions, especially with FTAs greatly affecting the annual revenue.

Striving to achieve and exceed the assigned targets, from the beginning of the year, Lang Son Customs Department has directed its subordinate units to create favorable conditions for import and export enterprises through the locality. Developing plans and proposing policy solutions to create favorable conditions for import and export activities; grasping the situation at the border gate, supporting enterprises 24/7 to timely propose solutions to remove difficulties and obstacles in the process of customs procedures at the border gate for enterprises to shorten customs clearance time; strengthen measures to prevent revenue loss; organizing the review of revenue sources and combating revenue losses through price consultation, determination of tax calculation values, post-clearance inspection; focus on reviewing and classifying debt groups, strengthening measures to recover outstanding tax debts, minimizing newly arising tax debts.

Besides, the unit also strengthened coordination with other sectors and forces in combating smuggling, preventing, inspecting and detecting commercial fraud. Therefore, the illegal transportation of goods across borders in the area continued to decrease compared to the previous period.

Recently, import-export turnover through Lang Son province has decreased significantly. Why is this?

Recently, the export of goods to China has become increasingly difficult due to the country's tight management of imported goods regarding the conditions of origin and quality, not only for agricultural products but also for seafood products.

This caused the export turnover of these products across the locality to decrease (in the first nine months of the year, export turnover reached more than US$1.2 billion, down 32.15% compared to the same period in 2018). In addition, China also tightened control of export goods at border gates, goods transferred from Vietnam to sub-border gates (import and export turnover of goods through sub-border gates decreased by 46% over the same period). This is the reason that the turnover of goods through the area decreased.

In addition, China has recently shifted its border economic development to Yunnan. Because that region has a number of preferential mechanisms for import and export taxes, many businesses open import and export goods declarations through the border gates of Lao Cai province.

Customs officers of Huu Nghi inspect an imported concrete mixer truck. Photo: H. Nu

Facing the above situation, what measures has Lang Son province in general and Lang Son Customs Department to create favorable conditions, as well as attract businesses to increase the state budget revenue, sir?

The current solution is to create trade facilitation to improve the trading activities of enterprises, thereby contributing to attracting domestic and foreign enterprises to invest in Lang Son, especially in the region of the border gate.

In the future, Lang Son Customs Department will continue to implement other measures to facilitate border trade in the direction of simplicity, clarity, transparency, publicity, convenience and compliance with international customs standards. Ensuring VNACCS/VCIS transmission line and business program applications operate smoothly. Thereby, supporting the clearance of import and export goods as quickly as possible.

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In addition, in order to attract and call businesses to import and export goods through Lang Son, I think Lang Son province should also have a reasonable incentive mechanism. Specifically, the province must continue to take advantage of the favorable conditions from the geographical location, at the same time continue to improve the provincial competitiveness, thereby creating more confidence for the business community. Besides, the province needs to continue investing and upgrading infrastructure of the border gates: Huu Nghi, Tan Thanh, Chi Ma and Coc Nam, as well as other border gates, to make importing and exporting goods more convenient.

Thank you, Sir!